Dreams and Things

From the blistering pits of Hell a voice cries out, “It is not my time yet! I am still falling. I have not come to the end of my fall. I have not ended my fall with sudden death.” And so he keeps on falling..  He is Falling Man. In the safety of his dark room Falling Man collects images of Icarus from the web. He stares at each fondly in turn. Some depict Icarus as he falls. Others depict his death on the scarred rocks below. Falling Man believes he is Icarus reborn. Like Icarus he has flown too close to the sun. His wings have melted and their straps torn unmercifully from his arms. Icarus plunges from light into the shadow below. Falling Man worships the fall of Icarus into darkness. He imagines himself making this fall. He sees the shadow into which he plummets. He lights his room with candles. He plays gloomy goth music on his stereo. The smoke of the candles and from his cigarettes fill his room. They form a cloud that drifts across the ceiling. To pay homage to his b...

I have tied myself to an anchor.      I am lying on the floor. Time slips away again.     I cannot see what it's for. I have been lost for so long.      I have become my disorder. Time has slipped away.      There is no longer any order. Now you see me tied down      and you reach for me. I open my eyes and feel      you making me see. Time passes so slowly      but you see my eyes. You release me from its grasp.      You loosen the ties. Will you stay with me?      Will you free me from pain? Your smile melts the ice.       I am no longer insane. The world has its share of triumphs.      Aching I reach above. Places in my heart.      You fill them with love.

I have lost track of time. I have lost a sense of space. I know I have been here at least three nights, maybe more. Hours flow into days flow into nights. The monotony is broken by the occasional screams of other patients. For my part I have not (yet) felt it necessary to scream or resist the omnipresent staff. They have the system down pat here. It's clear that they know how to handle the mentally disabled. Everything is locked down. I spent my first day searching for ways to kill myself. There are none. I made a thorough inventory of all the surfaces and edges that I might use to kill myself. There are none. I despair of finding a way to kill myself. And that is disheartening. As odd and contradictory as it sounds I am slowly getting beaten down. I have once again shown myself my ineptitude at suicide. I guess I will just fade into the background of blue paper scrubs until I begin to scream, too. I am isolated. I have lost all capability in making and retaining fr...

I deliberately cut my left forearm. I began doing this roughly nine years ago. I began with a razor blade but started using a box cutter approximately two years ago. Recently I am using a kitchen knife. I consider my cutting to be psychotic behavior. My diagnosis is bipolar with psychotic features . Personally I do not consider my bipolar and psychosis connected. Now that I have my bipolar under control I nevertheless have psychotic events in my life. Like hallucination. Like cutting. This post explores why and how I cut in my life from age 50 to my present age of 59 from a viewpoint of psychosis alone. I was delusional when I started. At that time I believed I was the Greek demigod Icarus. My cuts represented the places where Icarus' wings were ripped from him. I cut both arms then. My cuts were symbolic and very ritualized. I played dreamy goth music. I laid out all of the paraphernalia: the razor blade and the first aid materials I knew would be needed after the cut. I ...

[This is a post about my experiences during a visit to my brother and sister-in-law during the 2014 holiday season in December. I forgot to do this shortly after the visit so I have added it now.  I'm not sure about the dates. ] Friday December 18  My nephew Logan and I arrived in New York after a trip that started Thursday afternoon from San Francisco on a flight that lasted about four hours. I had very diligently taken two Klonopins before the flight so I was not so terrified of flying as I usually am. Because of jet lag I had trouble getting to sleep until about 1:30. I finally managed to sleep on a comfortable blow up bed that my brother had bought for me along with and one for my nephew Logan and set up in my brother Randy and my sister-in-law Denise's large bedroom. I slept fitfully. Because of my fear of not being able to sleep I decided to take an extra Temazepam, which gave me horrific nightmares. But I was able to survive and woke up around 1:00PM. Saturday Decemb...