Self Amusement

Anyone with a mood disorder, especially the types that induce periods of excitability and an elevated sense of self-potential can agree that a lot of the "personal thoughts" that fly around keep one amused for quite some time.

I've had so many wild thoughts and hallucinations over the past five years that memory triggers from daily life continue to resurface them. Now that I'm being treated for my unstable moods (I never reached a consensus diagnosis) I feel good most of the time and treat these flashbacks as ideas that can be creatively massaged into music videos, business ideas, jokes, even topics for serious scientific study. One of the topics that my hospitalizations and treatments brought forth concerns bipolar disorder, which leads to the study of cyclic behavior in moods.

I detest the naming and classification of mental illnesses, primarily because they are not necessary to effectively treat patients. Cyclic moods vary among individuals, and good useful drugs can treat such abnormalities according to their severity. Why call it bipolar? or Schizophrenia? or Anxiety/Depression? With matters of the mind, patient accounts and direct observation of behavior should be carefully documented to provide a course of treatment. No classification is required; diagnoses can be made at an anatomical and genetic level without having to "simplify" matters with a tag.

The psychology that defines our selves will never be fully characterized by reductionist methods such as scientific research. For this reason, mental disorders should not be classified like other bodily diseases. They stigmatize the affected and there are very distinct areas of uncertainty that prevent an accurate grouping of symptoms.

About 30% of the psychiatrists I visited as a patient did Not conclude that I was bipolar. The rest very confidently did. One of them even used a flow-chart style questionnaire; I consider him to be unacademic and maybe unintellectual.

I broke my heart in Central New Jersey

I didn't expect it at all...we had a pleasant dinner the previous night and she called me back after reading the letter I gave her. That conversation was strained and a bit awkward, and I felt as if she had taken others' opinions before calling. My friends were right, perhaps I should have just tried to hit and quit it. But there was no inclination from my side and I was uncertain if she would go for such a thing. Our families loosely knew each other so it was probably best that the developments did not lead asking such a question.

Next day, met her at work. It was my idea and she looked so beautiful. The whole time she was distant, somewhat amused by my jokes but not entirely focused on me. I left feeling as if my heart had been torn apart. I don't know why but it may have been because we shared so much over the phone before meeting that this type of ending was just really crushing. Definitely more so for me, since I was openly displaying my attraction towards her.

I would meet her again at any time but I'm not sure if I would hurt myself in doing so. I've cried about it, and every time I think of her face a knot forms in my chest.

I'm very upset

Open letter

...cause me to confront the way i live my life and how disapproving i am of it. there have been so many separate incidents in the year to date that gave rise to very deep introspection and doubts of my willingness to commit to a life of earning money for sustenance and fulfillment. not knowing my limits may indicate an awareness of significant potential but i tend to treat it as a means to avoid suicide my minimally fulfilling expectations and obligations conveyed by those closest to me. please spare me this note as i am trying, struggling to maintain order and understand what it means to have direction, to effectively communicate and to identify with others in a way that will find me in a peaceful and productive place

i live in a world oversaturated with information and i dont like it. i hate basing decisions on other peoples' opinions. all that i love in a woman is trapped in the body of someone whose father is disapproving of me. i am impetuous, greedy for money and increasingly intolerant of a society that markets chemical solutions to traumatized but resilient and highly capable minds. of the product i do partake, and i am so scared of flipping into a world full of cartoon characters that i continue to slavishly feed off of docility and repetition. i crave art, dynamics, purpose...

...yet the day's nearly over, leaving me beset, upset and distraught

A rift that set me adrift...

....and away with no sight of shore
flowing with a current and a mind state abhorrent
of the perceptions that led me astray yet entice me for more
attention-seeking analogy, and a metaphor that does never warrant

feeding it more fragmented thought, emotions from a can
the chain deludes me into acting out, massaging the pain
but alas to little gain. it remains to strain and ban that ill-mannered man
lest a hindering link i shall never sever, to reap the harvest of a single grain

journey, heed my call and in mercy portend my fall
ive worked myself into a pall as toward an exit i crawl in no haste
within i seek and digest distaste, fumbling for the room with no feel for a wall
teach me in the hall, above it all, as i lay this unrest...abreast...to waste

a period which closed the final remark
it threatened to reverse and not even park

Night mare once I rode as across an ocean of knowledge she strode...

My father often tells me to 'get on my horse'. Of course I'm sure he does not intend to tell me this so that I can harness a directionless instinct and wander off to a destination that yields no benefit. Sometimes I feel that way about the experiences I had as a science student. My educational progress was beset by a curiosity that became increasingly less bounded by the pragmatism of publishing and efficiently utilizing funds. I found myself conjuring up hypotheses for experiments that I knew my boss would not support and also that were lacking essential basic experiments to support what I had in mind. The last time I remember very practical experimentation was during the protein crystallography days when the goal was quite obvious: crystallize a purified protein, and then deduce its three-dimensional structure. Even then I became maddeningly frustrated by the repetition and carefulness demanded by the work. I never worked regular hours as a researcher, and the irregularities in my performance spilled over to my personal life which was almost always a mess. This wasn't just the typical stuff, like clothes strewn about and such but rather behavioral patterns that disturb me to think about to this day. For example, not sleeping for days on end, dulling my half-conscious awake states with endless movie watching and lazing about, withdrawing from social activity, and more generally disregarding my personal interests. From high school I have tortured myself through science for 10 years and while I greatly value my scientific literacy I deeply regret my slow realization that I should have learned to adjust to its demands or withdrawn at the first sign of incompatibility...