Aftermath (Part 2)

Here is part two of my ongoing essay, Aftermath.

Check out part one here: https://stephanheard.wordpress.com/2023/11/24/aftermath-part-1/#respond

Enjoy. Find my books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Phoenix/author/B00QEL41LS?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Well, since you ask, I can say: I am a very different person.

I don’t know how I feel. About anything. About everything. About the human condition. It’s been a difficult experience, to say the least. I have had tremendous, monumental help from the people who love me and the people around me, from helping me move to helping me find a better place to helping me with support and assistance. And yet, this hasn’t been an easy experience, by any means, because there is a lot to the aftermath. I never thought that people could do what they did, the seeing as how they did, I now have to accept that this is the way that people actually are and can be. In a world where there is so much cruelty and heartache and needless suffering, I don’t understand how people could do this and live with themselves.

I am in a better place now, and I am whole. But, I know from speaking honestly with myself, I am not fully processing everything that happened.

One of the hardest things about what happened, was that I just kept needing to talk about it. I tend to go around in loops in my mind, going over things multiple times, to try to understand them and have some form of resolution, no matter how makeshift. And there are the times where I don’t understand my thoughts and feelings, and so I get caught up in a jam, continually trying to figure it out, going over and over again in my mind, and how difficult it is to find any clarity, solution, or resolution.

Probably because of this, people wanted to talk about other things. We can’t just keep talking about trauma. And so, I would change the subject, or let the subject be changed. But I’ll be honest: I am not completely over this, and I haven’t been, and I need to talk about it more and more, to really understand what this means. It’s only been a month and a half since everything happened, and so because of that, I still need much time to heal. To give yourself space and give yourself grace, as they say. But the important thing here is that I have felt the need from others to move forward and move on, and move on now, even though I am not the place to do that, because I’m still grieving the loss, and feeling the intense pain and violation.

What is interesting to me is the way that the grief cycles work. We are often told not to get stuck on certain periods of the grief process, because of how this strains relationships and hurts our mental health. But in doing some research on grief, I found that grief is actually very idiosyncratic and personal, and you have to give people the space to grieve and process. So I am trying to figure it out, I have felt as though I’m supposed to just push through it, really quickly, even if that is not something that I want to do or feel is even helpful. I mean, of course I want to move on, but at the same time, I’m trying to process it the best way that I can. And for me, that means talking about it, as well as thinking about it. While I definitely understand the need to move forward and talk about other things with people, I still feel as though this will take a while to process, and there are so many reasons for that.

In fact, it can be difficult, to feel as though you have to talk about something else, and that you can’t process what happened. But I have tried to look at it from the perspective of what people that I love have told me, which is that I do have a lot going for me, I have my new place. And I am comfortable and happy here, so that is definitely a plus. Now that I have a new home, I can start to stabilize.

I don’t really get it, though. I don’t get why people would do things like this to victims and innocent people. I guess it helps to process some of the ways in which I broke down during this entire process.

There was one time where I was with my best friend, and I felt as though I wasn’t doing enough in my apartment hunt, and that was partly because I was so overwhelmed by it and froze. I will never forget the horrible way in which I lashed out at myself. While I understand that this is a part of my wiring, probably a part of me that many people do not understand, I still never want to lash out again, because it isn’t helpful to the process. But I was so low at the time, feeling worthless and like I couldn’t do anything, that I really had a hard time for a minute there. I hate myself, saw myself as useless with a useless brain, and I tore into myself and struggled.

What I realized throughout this process is that I do lean towards anger, and I realized that I can’t always suppress it. It’s my rage and midnight mania. There is a way in which that anger is going to be there, whether I like it or not, there is a way in which I am going to feel what I feel, and I have to have radical acceptance to accept that that is just the way that I am. But when I spend so much time in counseling trying to get a handle on my mental health and on interpersonal dynamics and relationships, and I still seem to struggle severely, I can be really unsure on what I’m even supposed to do, and I don’t really know what to do.

Maybe that is partly what was so disorienting and scary about my situation. Aside from the obvious fact that I could have been homeless and I could have lost everything (I didn’t, which I’m grateful for), it was obvious that part of the fear came from the fact that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to act or respond. I will never forget walking in the door, and seeing all of my stuff scattered everywhere. I don’t understand what possesses people to trash and defile and profane a place like a home, what was my home and safe space, just because they could. It seems so unbelievably cruel that they would do that. And I also know that nobody has an answer as to why people would do that, which is part of the difficulty and where the breakdown in communication comes from.

So I definitely have had a lot happen. A big move and a big change, the break-in, the loss of my grandmother, the loss of my health insurance, and so many of the things that happened in the interim of this violent experience. I don’t know why things are this way, it just doesn’t make sense sometimes, and you have to do your best to try to get through it, anyway. There was a time there were I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get through it at all, because of how much was at stake, and how much I kept breaking down. I had really been working hard in my life to figure out what I needed to do better; I have been trying so hard to figure out what the right things are, and yet, I have met constant resistance. It is probably true that people don’t really care, at least people out in the world, and that can be tough to have to experience. Obviously if someone really wanted to get it to hurt, they would trash your place, and steal everything that had any significance to you. And they literally would only get a few hundred dollars at the most, even though I invested in all of the materials and equipment that I had, for years.

I do know that people care, however, and that has been one of the best things about the process, is that I know that people do really care. My friends and loved ones and family have come together to help me out, and that really means a lot to me. So while the people that do things like this couldn’t care less, I know that there are many people in my world who do care and help me try to figure things out.

So the biggest thing that I’m trying to figure out, is how do I move forward? How do I become kinder and more compassionate to myself? How do I figure out what to do next? What is my move, now that this has happened? I don’t know. I find myself still not becoming bitter and mean and angry and rude, even though I have continually faced rejection for my writings and music, and in life, and even though I am not where I thought I would have been by now in life: organic growth versus mechanical growth. That is why it is so difficult: I feel as though I am not where I want to be yet, despite putting in all the work and making such a diligent effort and not complaining or comparing. Lately I have felt that because of expenses and things I have to cover financially, my art has taken a backseat (which pains me, and which really hurts). I’m struggling to afford music lessons, and I’ve lost pretty much of all of my equipment in the break-in. Of course, I’m working hard at my day job, and I am doing the best that I can in the world and in the workforce. I am professional and reliable. But it would be so nice if I could get a little bit further along in my writing and my art, or in my life in general, but it has been very difficult, nearly impossible, and that definitely doesn’t help the situation, even though I know that that is a separate issue that I can work through eventually. I still don’t like it, though. It makes me feel like a failure.

To me, then, that is one of the substantial parts of all of this, is that I recognize that while things have changed significantly, and while I’m not the same because of this experience, I need to focus on the good, and continue to cultivate my compassion and craft. It is not easy to do so, but it is something that I am focusing on. It is something that I am trying to figure out, and that I take seriously. The way that I understand it, is that I have changed a lot because of trauma and hardship. But I am actively reprioritizing things, to focus on what really matters, and what I really care about. It can be a very sobering process, but it’s incredibly important to this thing we call life. I still am creative and thoughtful, I am still reflecting and contemplative, I still take action and I still keep trying despite it all: to me, that is what matters here, is that I can continually act in the world, deciding what I do and what I will do: I have choices. It is definitely something that is on my mind, something that I am focusing on. I am hopeful.

Conspiracy (An Essay)

Enjoy the essay. Find my books at http://amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

            I believe in conspiracies.

            Maybe I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. Flat earth? Poisonous vaccines? Microchips? QAnon? Those conspiracies are so ridiculous to me that they don’t even cross my radar, even with all of my paranoia and skepticism and doubt. And of course it’s good to challenge the status quo, so the issue isn’t the conspiracy theories themselves, but the way the conspiracies are worded, framed, and formulated.

            Except it goes deeper. Because, I am paranoid all the time.

            I really am. I can’t trust anyone. I can’t trust anyone around me, or people that I love, or friends. I can’t trust cops, lawyers, doctors, civil servants. I can’t fucking trust anyone.

            And so this is where my conspiracy theories unfold.

            I have talked before about how I think that the universe is conspiring against me. I don’t believe that it isn’t working against me, given that the universe is an unknown entity. Of course this sounds no better than a flat-earth conspiracy or something about the Illuminati. And yet: I am paranoid.

            Why would the universe care? Well, of course it wouldn’t. It is indifferent, and hostile, but not due to any intrinsic property. Yet my mind over and over again goes into the whole belief that nothing is on my side and that everything exists to destroy my life, and to destroy me. The odd thing about being borderline atheist is that I guess I do believe in God, and I believe in a malevolent, destructive, evil god. I’ve written about stuff like this before, such as in my horror novels, but it’s really hard to believe that any God would ever be personal, loving, kind, benevolent, charitable, merciful, and good. The Old Testament God was none of these things. I am so tired of believing that there is any inherent metaphysical good, because the reality is that we are at the mercy of the cruel forces surrounding us, human nature and nature itself.

            I get the shit kicked out of me from time to time, and there are so many moments where I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. And that’s why I highlight the intensity of these beliefs. I don’t believe them in a skeptical, average state of mind. But when things are going wrong, my mind goes into that paranoid territory. It goes in that territory because I have no reason to believe that there is any good in those moments, since so much is falling apart. And that’s the way that I’m wired, so it’s what I believe.

            Of course people will say it’s not really a conspiracy, I mean: not really. They’ll tell me that I’m just overthinking it or being paranoid or making stuff up. But it’s the way that I’m wired. Getting the shit knocked out of you throughout your life makes it difficult to ever trust anybody. How can you know, with the ambiguity of human nature, that anyone has your back, that institutions work, and that people are inherently good?

            It’s the way I’m wired. Rationally of course I can look at it. I can examine the arguments, so to speak. But when so many things are punching you in the face and stomach, you have to accept the pain, and my mind goes. I think of the example in Mr. Robot. In that show, Elliot is constantly paranoid. Are people after him? Is violence right around the corner? Can he trust himself? Can he trust others? What’s going on? What’s happening? What’s really happening? Did you see what he saw, or is he crazy? Can he stay alive? And on, and on, in a million brilliant examples of what I feel like I experience all the time every day of my life.

            We know that these thoughts are imperfect, and they might be way off base (according to rationalists). But when I think about the violence in film, or even in print media, I think that humans are capable of a lot of cruelty. Sure, the violence might be stylized or made extreme on purpose; and yet it says something about human nature, about the proclivities of evil, and it shows so much about what’s possible. And that’s what disturbs me greatly.

            I am having so much trouble believing that anybody cares about me in any deep sense. While I know this isn’t true, that’s what the conspiracies are. And they run deep. I’ve heard the arguments (as I’ve had these beliefs since I was a younger kid). Conspiracies rarely are grounded in anything real. People care, there’s a mix of possibilities, it’s not all bad, there is good, it’s not all the same. But they fail to understand how paranoia actually works. Like Elliot talking about what makes sense to him, even though no one would ever think his perspective is true. I know the arguments. Logic shows us that we just like being in on the secret, because it feels good. Logic shows that it takes too much work to ever actually conspire against someone (or anyone). Could the government really be that efficient at surveillance and control? People can’t work that effectively, together or alone. But right now I don’t believe any of that. With silence, with people so quiet all the time, with an odd emptiness surrounding me, and constant doors closing: Fuck. It’s painful. Brutal. I don’t know that I can handle it, honestly. My brain is in hyperdrive trying to make sense of what happened. It’s trying to make sense of what happens. I can’t put it together, no matter how much I will try. Hence, why I believe in conspiracies.

            People can be amazingly cruel, but it’s not like people can form small (or even large) coalitions of ill intent. And believe me, I get it. It doesn’t help (or make sense) to suspect so many people around you. The irony is that I understand now why so many people these days are so suspicious. You really can’t trust anyone, it’s a dangerous world out there, and you could die. What can you ever expect? Who wouldn’t exploit you if they had the opportunity? Who wouldn’t hurt you when given the chance?

            This is why I’m struggling: My rational point of view is literally falling apart all around me. I can’t think rationally, my animal instincts have kicked in to hyperdrive. I’m in survival mode. I’m in a horrible mode that I hate and that I can’t control or understand or even know what to do with. I’m losing my mind.

            It might be that I can accept that things really are out of my control. That it wasn’t really personal. Nothing is personal. Events happen and they are often random. Arbitrary. Unlucky. But something is conspiring against me and everything that I love, and that’s the paranoia and heart depicted in Mr. Robot that I love so much. To me it seems that I can relate to that altered state of mind. You literally exist in a frozen state of pure fear. You can’t trust anything, anyone, anywhere. You can’t possibly trust anyone to do the right thing. No one is ethical anymore. The pain hurts. They are conspiring against me. There, I said it. They are all working against me.

            I’m aware of the pitfalls of these beliefs, given that I know many people who care about me. And that means a lot. But not everyone is good and at the very least most people are morally ambiguous (darker shades of gray or black). And when it hurts this much, and you feel like you can’t do anything and there is no recourse and you’re lonely and you’re isolated and you’re hit, you have to accept the bitter truth that nobody cares enough to do the right thing, at least as a general principle. Good people, sure, and even in my hyper state of fear and paranoia, I believe that there are many good people. But the pain is so real and my mind hurts and my paranoia has taken over me and there’s nothing I can do to make sense of any of it. I can’t make sense of it, and that’s why my prefrontal cortex is clogged and backed up. I can’t imagine why horrible things keep happening to me and how there’s nothing I can do to change it and how it is what it is and how much it hurts and how much it hurts and how my mind hurts trying to get untangled from the prickly, barbed wire paranoia that is deeply entrenched in my mind and the way that I’m wired and the way that I think and the default modus operandi of my mind. And that’s what hurts so much, is that there’s just silence. I can’t justify it anymore, I can’t rationalize. It’s too hard. I’m wired to be paranoid. I won’t say that I’m broken, but I’m not so kind or trusting, I’m rather suspicious and miserable and mean. And it sucks. But I don’t have a choice. I believe in conspiracies.

            I don’t really live in the real world, and that’s a major part of the problem. My mind is mediated by many layers, mostly of delusion and other symptoms. But the pain. The pain is what prompts so much of my fears even though I’ve tried my entire life to be kind and compassionate to people and never thought that it could get any worse when there’s so much pain already and I’m sad because I don’t have anything else to give and there’s nothing left for me to say. And that’s what hurts the most, is that that’s over for me. I’m thankfully not suicidal but I am incredibly sad because it’s all conspiracy theory: nothing you can prove, no evidence, nothing you can change and nothing you can do. And so in that way: It’s over. It’s over for good. There’s nothing left to show. So my mind relies on its natural, default state. It relies on paranoia and fear and conspiracy and suspicion. My mind works against me and becomes its own conspiracy theory. In this way: I am finally my default mind. Which is a virtual hellscape.

Soothe (A Poem)

Enjoy the poem. My Venmo is Stephan Heard@Phoenix-Rises. Check out the reading below. Find my books at http://amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

stuck
in it

this trick 
a trap
soothe
and

START STOP

sight
seethe
see

dead 
yet alive

be
too many words
unheard

unheard
what

was
break
in

stuck

can’t
see it
imagine

it

break into it

complicit
implicit
unsolicit

in

what you feel
what isn’t 

hopeful
helpful 

or meaningful
sense
of security

cracked
thoughts
crooked

and lost
the crooked timber
bitter timbre
of man
too

much crush
broke

in break
create
loss in

it make
words

moving unsoothing
words

doing nothing
detailing
need needing 

anything feeling 
unsmooth
rough

ragged jagged
created

creative
yet

trauma
drama
things you 

can’t
put back
or fix

what can’t ever be replaced

broken parts
broken heart
ripped

to shreds

everything is destroyed instead.

Tears (An Essay)

The pain. Enjoy the essay. Find my books at http://amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

So much out of my control. The things out of my hands, the things I don’t control. But, the tears.

            I don’t know what to do, with such horrible destroying-me thoughts and emotions, where my mind takes over. Suicidal ideation, depression, anger and rage, midnight mania, sadness and deep existential despair, unbelievable pain and me wishing I could break out of my body.

            The tears are real. I am depressive in general. Often retreating inwards and introjecting so I don’t lash out and project on to others. But the pain is significant that I feel like I don’t really have a choice in the matter. I feel like I have to release the emotions. And that includes many tears.

            I am a sad person, and I don’t know why. Tormented, even. I would think it’d be more hopeful, I would think it wouldn’t be so bad. But I know, it’s bad, and that’s where it is overwhelming and I know it’s out of my control. When horrible things happen and all you can do is follow the process, and you are unable to do anything different or do anything that helps you understand what to do.

            I have so much on my mind. I am struggling at work given the intense nature of the work I do. I’m dealing with the break-in of my sacred space that overturned my life. I’m always struggling with my mental health and with suicidal ideation. I’m always struggling to stay stable. I’m sad at the way people have treated me. I’m sad that I am blocked. I’m overwhelmed that I feel what I feel where people are just trying to be mean to me. The paranoia, the fear, the anxiety, the nihilism, the despair, and I feel like there’s so little I can ever do about it, if anything at all. Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing at all.

            The tears are real. You weep because you know you are broken as a person, and the feelings are always there whether you like it or not. Even when things are good and you’re able to cope better, the sharpest depression taking you in, pulling you inward like quicksand, and there’s nothing you can do to change the unbearable feelings.

            The tears. I don’t know what you do with them but let them exist. Trauma is what it is, trauma is what it will always be. And so, you do what you can. You do what you hope will help you move forward. Self-care, expression. Outlets, friends and family. Trying to do better. Trying to accept the difficulties of life in stride. So difficult to do and it doesn’t often make sense what it means, but it’s there and just trying to figure out what it means and what you can do.

            Tears are often bitter and they don’t make sense and it’s not clear what to do with them. But you have to let them exist. You have to let the feelings be there. You have to let them be what they are.

            They hurt, of course, and are often indeed very bitter and the anguish is overwhelming and there’s nothing you can do about those feelings. With my incredible sense of uneasiness, I feel like I have to be diligent with the emotions, and pay more attention to the world around me. There’s only so much I can do given the circumstances, and I just have to deal with it as it is. But the tears are painful.

            It’s finding ways of coping and knowing what to do, though it’s often not clear. When you have the shit kicked out of you your whole life, what else do you believe about yourself and others but that it’s all destruction and despair and pain and bloody bodies? What else do you do but accept the impossible chaos that is this existence and that you don’t control and that you can’t control and that you still somehow have to deal with?

            I was feeling good. Had a good sabbatical and was feeling better about things. But I was violated, and that’s my thoughts always go to the same thoughts. If this happening to me, I must be stupid. I just, I have to be stupid, I have to be the dumbest person in the world, I have to be someone who can’t figure it out and get stuff done, doesn’t know what to do and is overwhelmed all the time, I must be stupid because this keeps happening to me despite my best efforts, and I must be that dumb.

            I hate it, but it’s where my mind goes, and where the despair and anxiety destroys me.

            They stole my words from my flash drives. That is an unbelievable blow. It’s my life’s work. It’s everything I’ve done. Why did they need the drives? It’s just my words. How could they do something so evil to someone? It is my life’s work. Kill me right in the heart.

            I’m angry and I’m confused and I think the world sucks and that mean people are terrible and I don’t know what to do to get back into my flow of things and figure out what comes next. I think of the movie Black Phone and how intense that show is in capturing the idea of kill or be killed. If I am threatened and my sense of security and safety gone because people are trying to kill me, you can’t just turn the other cheek or you’ll die. You have to fight. So what if I fought?  What if I finally expressed what I really feel? I don’t get it. Destroyed. Destroyed. And so many tears and so much crying and there’s nothing I can do about it.

            I have so much I have to do and I don’t know what to do with it. I just have to do my best to move forward. But I finally feel like good things are happening, and then the heartbreak comes back and it’s miserable and my life is uprooted and there’s nothing else I can do. There’s nothing I can do to change what happens. There’s nothing I can do to change the outcome. That’s probably what’s so hard, is I know the tears and the blood from the wounds will spill because of the condition we find ourselves in. I feel the tears and the blood and my writing is the thing that has helped me figure things out, that has given me a healthy outlet, that has helped me share my experience with others, and I hate that the pain is always there and there’s nothing I can do to change it even though I wish so much that I could, but I can’t control it so I write. I can’t control it so I tell my stories and share my words. What else am I conceivably going to do? I need the language.

            It’s so tough and hard because my sense of safety and security are gone. I carved a space for myself in the world. I couldn’t control the environment or the world itself, but I could control my environment. I couldn’t control other people and the crimes they commit, but I could control what I did with my time and with my life. But now I don’t even have that. I don’t even have the safety and security of a sacred space. A place where I can make videos and write and play music.

            I don’t know why people do what they do, and I have so much empathy for people and their tears, but I feel like the crying never stops. I feel like the crying is always there, because the world hurts so much and there’s nothing else we can do. I don’t understand it, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do with everything, it’s out of my control and it’s so fresh and it hurts so much and the wound is still so blood and so I cry and there’s nothing I can do but let the tears spill out like the blood and sweat and like this world I’ve tried to love and how it’s still breaking me anyway and I don’t even know why.

            Kill or be killed, yet I struggle to fight back. I struggle. And the world will destroy me, even though I don’t know why and know there’s nothing I can do about it. The horrific things we do to each other, wars, genocides, violence, sociopathic manipulations, and the pain of being in a world so cruel is there and there’s nothing I can do and there’s nothing I can change about the human condition.

            And so that’s what’s out of my control. Don’t tell me to be grateful or that I’m blessed. There’s so much killing me right now. But I still have the tears. I still have all the tears. I still am crying. I don’t know what else people would do given the circumstances. I don’t know what else they would do: but cry. To feel the tears and let the tears water the Earth, there’s nothing else but to cry those sweet, sweet tears, the pain and the phoenix tears, and doing what you can to heal and rebirth, it’s over, it’s over for me, and I just cry, and there are just the tears.

Unquiet Minds

I made a video for my Mind and Art Series on YouTube, inspired by An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. Check it out. It details the positive elements of telling our story, which is so important and meaningful. Tell your story.

Adventures (An Essay)

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I have been through quite the journey. It’s quite the adventure.

Living with mental illness is a very fascinating and troubling thing. I have schizoaffective disorder with bipolar, which means I have schizophrenic symptoms, such as delusions and paranoia, with the bipolar tendencies of depression and extreme mood variation.

I was diagnosed when I was a teenager. Being a teen is already hard enough. You are trying to fit in in school and discover yourself. You’re trying to decide what you want to do with your life. I still sometimes feel as though being diagnosed when I was a teenager took away from the experience of being a teen. I feel as though I did not get the true experience in a lot of ways, because of my diagnosis. It is something that still haunts me even today, though I would say that through time, I have found myself and become more grounded in what I am trying to do, and I’m living my life.

But it definitely wasn’t a cakewalk. People at school never treated me the same way again, and even though mental illness can be caused by genetics and trauma, people do not understand it, and they were very judgmental towards me. I myself was never the same after my experiences in high school.

Yet mental illness is out of your control, at least at the acute, crisis level. I didn’t understand my circumstances at the time, definitely not as a kid. I didn’t know what was going on, I just had to live with it somehow. I remember telling one of my friends on the phone that I was in the mental hospital, and that was not a fun experience, to have to admit where you were and how much you were struggling. Taking medications in the hospital was horrible, because the side effects were unbearable starting out, and while I don’t want to see myself as a victim in any way, I still nonetheless felt as though my situation was unfair (how do you understand something like that at that age?), and I didn’t know what to do with it at the time.

But there were things that I wanted to do, and when I got on a very strong medication called Clozaril, I was stable for a few years, and I remember working at Kmart and going to college and listening to rock music, and I did okay for awhile. That was with a lot of struggle, but ultimately, the medications helped me. But the medications were powerful, and I couldn’t be on them long-term, because they were messing with my body, and I ultimately had to get on medications that were less dangerous.

I did not like taking medications, however, and when I was still in college, I made the decision to not take my medications. I did this for a lot of reasons, one because I didn’t like taking them, but also because I was paranoid that the medications were poisonous and that they were making me sick. The authorities around me did not understand this, but it was one of the reasons for me not taking the medication that I was supposed to. It seemed as though I wasn’t going to be able to recover, as for several months, I struggled with suicidal thoughts and psychosis, and I was not myself, and I know this now.

I often joke with myself that you don’t start to understand yourself and your place in the world and who you are, until you are at least twenty-five years old. For a few years, then, I have managed to build my life the way that I have wanted to. I work at a treatment facility for those struggling with addiction, and I write and publish my books, which includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. I would say that life has treated me well the past seven or so years, and I would say that I still had a decent college experience, because towards the end of it, I was much more stable and self-aware of my diagnosis and what this would mean for my life. It took a long time for me to figure that out, but I was able to through time, with much effort and diligence.

But mental illness is a very difficult thing, and I wouldn’t want anyone to ever have to have that. The stigma for mental health is still really strong, and even though things have gotten better socially, people still nonetheless judge those with mental illness as being crazy, or worse. Unfortunately, sometimes in the mental health care system, people with authority do not always make compassionate and empathetic decisions on your behalf, and there have been many times where I have felt that my doctors didn’t even have my best interests at heart. Dealing with the system, then, is something that I would never have asked for, and something that I didn’t want, but something that I have to deal with anyway.

In general, people do not understand mental illness, but I do think it is getting better as there is more awareness now. But when you’re dealing with mental illness, the last thing that you want to deal with is stigma. People have especially strong stigmas about schizophrenia, often thinking that those with the illness are violent and unstable and homeless, even though that is not usually true.

Then there is the actual experience of mental illness itself. Mental illness for me is very painful, and I use the word pain, because I often feel pain in my body and mind whenever I’m suffering, whether from psychosis, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, depression, others symptoms, or all of the above. The medications help mediate the symptoms, but life is still filled with many stressors, and so things don’t always go the way that we hope they will. With mental illness and with the many symptoms that I have, it is easy to get lost in my emotions and in my mind, and that is why I have to be self-aware. But those experiences are not something that I would ever wish on anyone. They are very disorienting, confusing, and horrible.

You would think that you could just be logical about mental illness, and sometimes you can, and sometimes it helps. But there have been many times where my body has been out of sync with my irrationality. So for example, I may know, logically and psychologically, that I am okay, and that I will be able to deal with the problem at hand, but the stress of dealing with interpersonal dynamics as well as life itself and our struggles, can stress me out, and it can be very hard to regulate that disconnect between body and mind. As I have described before, when I am suffering, I have what could be called a sustained mood, a mood that lasts for quite a while, regardless of my thought process or rationality. This can be very horrible, honestly, because I feel a certain way regardless of what I think about it, where I have a very physical, visceral reaction to something in the world, and it doesn’t matter how much I talk myself out of the mood, I still feel the feelings.

Mental illness is horrible for these reasons, because it is so visceral and real to me, in a way that it isn’t to other people. The mind and body do things that don’t always make sense, and all you can do is struggle through it for a while, and be aware. As much as I wish that I didn’t feel a certain way, sometimes, I do end up feeling that way, and that can be very difficult, but it is something that I nonetheless live with.

Having suicidal thoughts and depressive moods is very horrible as well. There have been times where I have been so low, that I literally cannot live in my body. It doesn’t matter what I do in these situations, the feelings are still there. (Though I’d say it does eventually get better, once I’m able to take myself out of that state of mind with the tools I’ve learned through time.) It is very painful to have to experience depression and suicidal thoughts, and it is not something that I like or would have ever wanted. But it is part of living with mental illness, which is why I incorporate CBT and DBT therapy into my routine and as immediate ways of coping with life. I also emphasize healthy eating and exercise, because overall those life changes have helped my overall mental state and wellbeing. With my experience with mental illness, I am much better able to live with it, and things do not get as bad as they have been in the past.

The triggers that often make me feel terrible, might be innocuous, or they might be extreme. I have had to learn to live with these things, live with the difficulties, because as people know, we have problems in life, and we have to deal with those problems, whether we suffer from mental illness or not. So in my adventures, I have tried to be aware of what is making me feel a certain way, and that helps me gain control. As long as I can feel what I feel and point out the underlying reasons for it, I am able to deal with it. I have had trouble with difficult situations before, because of how much it has affected my mood, but now, I do much better at it, and that is because I am aware of it, and I know that life will still be awful and sometimes things are not good, but I deal with it anyway, as well as I can.

But attaching positive associations to difficulties is good to do as well. I am a strong person and I have overcome a lot. My struggles, while not something I would have ever wanted, have taught me a lot in life, and that is a very good thing. In many ways, I am on an adventure, and sometimes there is danger and instability in our life paths, but we find a way to journey through, and to survive and become our best selves.

There have been times in my life where it has become strictly about survival, literally survival itself is the most important thing for me. As stigmatized as suicide may be, it is something that I have tried to talk about, because it is something that I have struggled with in my own life. With my various experiences, I have struggled with ideation, and psychosis putting me in dangerous situations and mind states. Going to the hospital too many times, and struggling to get by in my environment, was all about survival. In a lot of ways, there really was no other way, there was nothing else that I could focus on. It was about overcoming the powerful feelings I had, that were literally killing me, to the point to where it was all that I focused on sometimes, was moving past those feelings.

Of course, in real life, there are many ways in which survival is a part of our lives, but it took on an added dimension when I was struggling with mental illness and suicidal thoughts. I don’t believe myself to ever be someone who would act on the ideation, but that does not mean that I haven’t still struggled with the depressive feelings that lead to such thoughts, and that has been very difficult to overcome, because it is often unexpected, jarring, and brutal, but so incredibly present.

There were times where I didn’t think that I was going to survive, either because I was in a dangerous situation that my illness had put me in, or the feelings were just too overwhelming and I literally didn’t know what to do with them anymore.

But I feel as though talking about suicidal thoughts and ideation is a good step, and even though not everybody is receptive to it, I can at least talk about it to people that I trust, and I can express it in my writing. It does need to be talked about. I lost a great friend last year to suicide, and that was extremely hard for me. I knew that that could happen to me, if I had not been able to get my mental health under control. And he was a good friend of mine, and I was very sad that he could no longer be with us, because of his own struggles. In his case, it was literally lethal.

So suicidal thoughts are not something to gloss over, and they do affect people. But the stigma is so incredibly powerful, that people do not talk about it or seek out help. And I don’t blame them. People think that suicide is a selfish decision, because you are disregarding the people around you, but what they don’t understand is that your mindset becomes distorted by the bad chemistry and by your response to the environment and life situations, and that is not your fault. People want to stigmatize suicide and suicidal people, and it does a lot of damage. This is because people cannot express something that is very real to them, and they cannot work through it easily. I don’t doubt that part of the reason why I lost my friend, to suicide, was because he felt isolated and alone, and he didn’t feel as though he could reach out to people. The sad thing was that he had good people in his life, including me, who cared about him very much, and wanted to support him. And it didn’t matter how many times I told him this, it didn’t change the outcome.

I get sad thinking about these kinds of things. I am just glad that I don’t struggle with suicidal thoughts nearly as much as I used to, and have before. Sometimes it was unbearable. Through time, I have learned a lot of good coping mechanisms, and therapy has helped me understand myself more. Writing is an incredible outlet and expression, because it is a positive manifestation of something, and it is tangible and real. I find that to be remarkable, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to do it throughout the years, because I feel as though I am leaving behind good work that people will hopefully be able to benefit from later on down the line. Plus it helps keep me grounded and present, which is important to my recovery.

It is sad that mental illness is not understood by most of society and by the general public. Yet it affects a lot of people. In terms of my own diagnosis, even though trauma was a part of it, genetics also were a factor. It runs in my family. This is difficult to realize, because it means the genetic component is completely out of my control. But I nonetheless continue to do what I need to, to take care of myself, and to not suffer more than I have to.

I don’t want to see myself as a victim of any sort, even though mental illness has hurt me a lot, in a variety of ways. Instead, I want to see myself as someone who has overcome horrible things, painful things, in order to become a better person and to rise above it like a phoenix. It is hard, because some people do not hear me, they don’t listen, and they do not understand or want to understand what it is like to live with mental illness, what my experience is like on a daily basis. There have been many times where I have thought that I could live a much better life if I did not have to focus on dealing with mental health issues. And I think that this is true in a lot of ways. Suffering can make you stronger, but too much suffering can break you, and make you bitter and calloused. So you have to be knowledgeable of what you feel and experience, because what you experience could be the thing that pushes you over the edge. Thankfully in my life I have been resilient and resourceful, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes think that I would have been much happier had I not had to struggle with mental illness. If I had not had mental illness, I wouldn’t have had to struggle with the stigma, with the judgments, and with mental illness itself. I wouldn’t have ended up so lost in my own mindset, struggling to know what to do sometimes, and I would have been able to take a more conventional path in life. While I wouldn’t say that my path needed to be conventional, there is a part of me that wants normalcy, because I want to have a normal life, and not focus on things that are out of my control.

But there is a way in which it really is the luck of the draw: you never know what you’re going to get in life, but I got what I got, and it is better to accept that, than try to numb out these truths. There is a reason why acceptance is such an important part in the recovery process: if you don’t accept it, you can’t move on and move forward. If you accept it, you can begin to make choices that will impact your life in a positive way, and you can begin to cultivate the kind of life that you want to live. That’s what I learned, and it helps me.

Believe me, I know it is not easy, life is not easy for anyone. We all struggle with various things, and there are people that struggle with mental health issues, who don’t even know that that is what they are experiencing. This often leads to self-destructive and self-medicating behaviors. I’ve seen that happen, where people don’t know what they’re going through, and what they are experiencing, and so they cope in unhelpful and unhealthy ways. It takes a lot of awareness and struggle to know what you’re going through, and it is not something that I would ever want anyone to have to experience. But through time, I have managed to accept what I am going through, and that helps me contextualize it and not look at it with so much fear. You can become stronger through your experiences and efforts, and you can get through it. There is no reason why mental illness has to be a death sentence, or the thing that always tears you down. There are positive steps that you can take, and things that you can do, and while I know that it is still hard to experience these things, I at least for myself know that I have managed to get through it. With having mental illness as a part of my life, I feel as though I have become a stronger, more empathetic person, and while I wouldn’t say it was mental illness itself that led to that, going through adversity and difficult things has helped refine me to become a better person, and I need to acknowledge that.

I definitely think that I’ve been through a lot, and I can’t deny that. Sometimes, it is Hell itself. But I have also gone on an adventure, seen new places, and that has helped me to refine myself, and to become better. The adventure has made me a better person, and I am able to give back. While the conditions are not ideal, and while I wish that I wasn’t given this hand sometimes, I know that I made the best of it that I could, I’ve taken what I was given, and I have done something with it. That is all you can do sometimes in life, so you may as well enjoy the adventure. There is a lot of satisfaction in such an understanding, because you realize how much you’ve grown and how much you have changed through time. You’ve realized what you have done well in life. It makes you stronger.

Disable (A Poem)

Enjoy the poem. Check out the YouTube reading below. Find Phoenix at http://amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

too much life unrich 
subtle brutal rush
too much such

a life
line snipped of
lost time brutal
thought always

holding you back your
fault

line lifeline too much
of the falling behind
so much to navigate
can’t

fix myself so irate
unstable stumble unable enable
I am boxed in

from all the pressures within
without and all of the 
endless doubt so much

of the cop out my life
unbalanced unhinged so
entrances by

Hell’s entrance feel
empathy yet shown dead
sympathy a world of

such breaking words and
of feeling hurt and
beauty breaks down and

I drown too much
within makes me stumble 
unable

this
reality I can’t confront 
get the brunt
of it bruised regardless

of what I 
actually choose
this way

I’m breaking too much
I’m falling no
balance I’m falling
unhinged and infringed 

this life of mine
impinged

and the rest is
out of my control 
what

I lose
murdered whole
grave yet no one to save

me anymore disable.

Recovered (A Special Poem)

Enjoy the poem. Check out the reading on YouTube below. Find Phoenix at http://amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

to recognize his mental health
was mental hell

he had to decide
what he wanted to do

but this at the time
didn’t feel true 
to

his desire for
other worlds and
beautiful words
a psychosis unable to resist

he hated doctors for
dictating everything
every day
making him numb
from feeling

dumb
just wanted to write
a novel

novel
but didn’t know how
too much chaos
in it
his mind unable

to insist something better
resist the delusion

and thought illusion

I know
he hated treatment 
he said it
because he felt
paranoid and

deep in a void
a reality of mind

he couldn’t avoid
couldn’t understand 
enough of the truth

of mental illness
of recovery
this wild world of mental discovery

too much
such

an overwhelming reality
unable to think 
or speak

but maybe write poems
about

going home
desire for heaven uneven
desire for

a better reality 
a life he wanted to live well
doing well

be okay and heal

I’m your doctor who prescribed you the pill.

Mental Illness As a Social Construct (YouTube Video)

I realized I made this video exactly a year ago. Stoked I was able to make it. It’s one of my most viewed videos. It’s about a topic close to my heart. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPeQviT6Zs8

Some Reflections On Mental Health

Find Phoenix at http://Amazon.com/author/phoenix_rises

Today is a good day. I woke up feeling pretty determined. I’ve got family and friends, and I’m focusing on the great things that I have, and that I get to enjoy.

My hope is that I’ll be able to remain determined and focused. The other day, I was thinking of the intensity of our existence, and how we have no choice sometimes but to confront death, and the hardships of life. Often in life, we have to confront unpleasant things, and that can be difficult.

Remembering that death and suffering is a part of life is not easy to remember. It’s existential, the existential crisis. It’s difficult to have life, when many different things happen, and do happen, things we might not be ready for, but that happen anyway. When I think about what people I love have been through, it can be tough. It doesn’t make sense or seem fair, but it’s the way that it is.

Yet resilience is another important theme to all of this. I have been resilient in my life, and so have my loved ones. I feel as though it’s important to remember what you have overcome, what I have overcome. While we have been through a lot, we do our best, and we do get through.

Resilience and determination are important to remember. Cultivating those traits is incredibly powerful for the unpredictabilities of life.

I’ve been thinking about mental health, and the complexities with those things, all it involves. It is complicated. People I know have been through a lot because of mental illness. It’s not something I ever would have expected, in retrospect.

I keep thinking of what I went through when I was twenty one, and how difficult it was for me, when I got off my meds and struggled with psychosis. Mental illness is not something that everyone goes through. But, it is genetic. I’m trying to have more compassion for myself for what I have been through with mental illness. It’s a tough thing that has deeply influenced my life, in so many ways, not ways I always anticipated. That’s not an easy thing to recognize. But the point I’m trying to emphasize is that I got through it. I persevered through it.

It’s not easy to remember the self-compassion piece. Mental illness almost uprooted my life when I was younger, and it’s hard to imagine that this was what happened. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want the struggle that came with it. It was the reason why I finally took my mental health so seriously, because I realized that my mind could do things I didn’t like without me being aware of it.

Why the mind makes things so difficult, I can’t really say. There are many explanations for it. It’s a confusing thing, though, even with the scientific explanations. Mental illness is not so easily understood, especially on a social and interpersonal level. I personally don’t understand it, and I lived through it. My assumption, though, is that the human mind is easily subject to delusion and confusion, at least in some cases, and it’s obvious that people experience that sometimes. The mind, in other words, is not always rational. There’s no specific way people have to think, and so it’s easy for the mind to wander in complicated and uncharted territory.

Believe me, I don’t fully understand the process, though I try to. It is a complicated process. For me, the way I get through it is by focusing on what I’ve overcome. I don’t know why humans struggle with such things, but it doesn’t stop it from happening.

Aside from unpredictability and other unknown factors about the human mind, it can be difficult to understand why we do the things we do in the first place, what process is at play. Learning to be aware of this is part of the process of getting through it. The human mind is complex, and it’s important to remember this.

Delusion, confusion, delirium, unpredictability: All of these things describe the human mind. I of course don’t want to only focus on the places where the mind is subject to such negative processes, because the mind is capable of good things as well. But that said, it is interesting where the mind can go, and it is important to acknowledge it.

I realize for myself how important it is to pay attention to the mind, even to the things I don’t like. I pay attention to my mind because I know that it’s often telling me something. It’s not an easy thing at all, because it’s easy to ignore our mind.  But through my experiences, I’ve learned to be more aware, and that really helps me get through it.

It does confuse me how my mind has gone off the rails before, such as when I was younger. It worries me, because I know it can happen to other people, as it has. I’ve seen it happen. That can be difficult, to see mental illness in other people that you love, but it does happen sometimes. I’m glad that I still have my family, though. I’m grateful for them. I know we have gotten through a lot, and I’m grateful we have gotten through.

There were times where I wasn’t sure if I’d get through. And obviously seeing it in people I love is difficult.

Of course it doesn’t make sense why we go through these things. Notions of suffering in the mind aren’t really intuitive. It doesn’t make sense why people through it. I didn’t know if I’d get through, because it was such a complicated thing to experience, and I didn’t know what was going on. It involves so much of your attention and emotions, and without medication and therapy, it can be easy to go off the rails. This doesn’t make you a bad person, though, and that’s one of the things I continually keep in mind. People fear mental illness, but most people that go through it are experiencing something really difficult to explain and relate to, and that’s something I’ve acknowledged for myself. There were things I could have done differently in the past, of course, but quite a big chunk of it was out of my control. There is a lot about our mental health that takes time to learn, such as mindfulness and self-awareness.

I believe that people can definitely thrive with mental illness, though. I’m sad what the people I love have been through, but I’m also grateful that they have pulled through, that they are still here, living normal lives. I have to give myself credit, because I have gotten through it too, and that matters. It’s definitely a good place to be, where you feel that you have more control over your life. Personally I feel like I have more freedom in my life now, and that gives me hope. I’ve dealt with it. Mental illness is not something that will occupy your whole life, once it is under control. As I’ve told myself many times, life is about learning not to just survive, but also thrive. I find value in such a notion. It’s not just about getting through, but also enjoying life, and finding joy.

You can find joy in life, even with mental illness. I’ve found joy. Even though at times I fear death and the unknown, I’ve learned more and more that we can get through these difficult things, that we can have a healthy mentality, and push through the difficult things. I struggle with it sometimes, I seem to be very sensitive to the suffering of others, and I have visceral responses to pain. But we can get through. We push through. I may not understand what I’ve been through, or what other people have been through, but the people I love have been resilient. We are definitely resilient. That matters for pushing forward. No need to fear the unknown, when we’ve got each other. I’m hopeful for the future. I’ve learned a lot from it.