perseverance

Do i insist on being unhappy? That idea popped into my head while I was in the bath a few minutes ago. It is very possible that i do tendd to sink into unhappiness because it is not comfortable, but known. This could be a very important thing to understand, because if this is the case, why I am so unhappy all of the time, maybe there is a way to turn my perception into optimisitic, make the default ideas not destructive and sorrowful, but bright. I think it makes a lot of sense. I definately do feel a draw towards feeling horrible, or taking things one way vs another, and when I bring that perspective into reality while moving into those negative feelinsgs, it seems like i almost have a choice of whether to let things progress into that way of being or not. I just dont know another way of thinking, meaning, i havent taught myself abotu it yet. It does seem probable that this could be something i can fulfill.

Two weeks from yesterday my baby sister died on the same day she was born. She had sever dwarfism, causing her rib cage to stop growing, making her lungs unable to expand to let her breathe. She was alive for about 57 minutes. My dad had my two brothers and I come down to the hospital so we could meet our only sister before she was gone. She was super purple, but not as small as i expected. Nick said that when she first came out she was able to let out a cry, but that was the only noise that ever escaped her lips.

I didn't know what to think or feel. It was a very strange day. I didn't think it would effect me too much, I had to go to work a couple hours after being at the hospital, but once i was away, it really hit me. Wow, that was my sister. A girl that i'll never get to know, or play with, or take care of. Never get to be that older brother that imtimidates her boyfriends into not daring to treat her unkindly. I ended up calling in to work, well emailing in because they didn't provide an number to reach anyone at.

The funeral was the following Saturday. It was weird, i haven't been inside of a regular sized church in years, and it used to be a place i spent every sunday. I felt no remorse for church. I still think the idea is cute, but generally misleading. It bugs me to see how people get trapped in that silly perspective, and it takes quite the hold over them. It turns everyone into a cliche model. Very strange, but this isnt the time.

My girlfriend wasnt too happy with me the day of Lexi's birth, probably as a reflection of my gloomy mood. It must suck for her being attached to me. Even on days that aren't so weird. My older brother keeps talking to me about marriage. How am I supposed to marry someone? I'm so unhappy. Can i keep it together enough for someone else to want to stay with me? Whats the point of marriage if in a year your spouse is so sick of you that they want a divorce? that's a rediculous idea. And anyway, its not something that should be contemplated for some time to come. This entire situation baffles and sometimes offers nothing but staggering blows when i think about the circumstances that lead to the current situation. It hurts deeply, and I know that many other people would not have agreed to continue things. But I love her and I'm just hoping that the deep damages that have been inflicted in light of this are not permanent. Ugh.

Something needs to happen and soon.

Long Distance Duration

It has been quite some time since i've written anything, even longer since i've written on the internet. 

damn things get confusing quick. I can't believe this winter, it has been very intense, but in retrospect easier than any other i've had, as far as my madness goes. I know precisely why, but that isn't anything i need to speculate on.

I've been thinking a lot about what really matters. Priorities and whatnot. I've lost a lot of my perspective, probably the winter reset got to me, i dunno. But to search for things that are not real, things that are man made, these systems and patterns we're told we're supposed to live by, is utterly useless. I watch all of these people spend their time in pursuit of a lifestyle that doesn't actually matter. The quest for money, to get caught up in this scheme of getting a loan, getting married, buying two cars, getting in debt so that you can spend the rest of your life paying it off while some dude somewhere sits in his mansion and gets rich off it. What a waste. What is real? It seems that you should live life to make money, not make money to try to have a life. What is money really worth anyway? We made it up. There is nothing eternal about that. I hear so many people speak about god, and what he would want us to do, but they're all basing their decisions off of man made ideals, the things we've been conditioned throughout our entire lives to believe is okay and should be done. It makes no sense. 

What do i know though? I'm crazy. Ask a doctor if you don't believe me. Life comes first, realness, goodness, the eternal. actually finding a place in reality and bounding out of this veil that has been placed in over our eyes of what reality should be. Try removing yourself from those things and find what its all really about, what humans really are. Not these perpetual consumers, chasing an idea that doesn't exist. Everything is actually very very simple. Remove the grey, look at black and white. Truth or absense of truth. That is all that really matters. In the long run. There are always short time fixes is all i see people do, noone seems to even notice the eternal, the long term fixes. Progression happens with everything, we wouldn't notice anything without progression/change, so why don't people see the logic in taking care of a problem before it gets any worse? while the control is still there? life also seems very cyclic, so there are times when you'll be able to plant your seed in the most opprotune of moments so it will be strong enough to be nutured through the rest of the moments. haha i just found this on my other blog. Nevermind i'll keep that to myself. I dont know what i just wrote here, probably a bunch of mindless bullshit. I have so many thoughts that i don't need to publish.

I had the best week ever, and am so very happy it happened. It changed my perception on life in so many ways. So thank you very much for that, and i hope for the best. It takes a lot to let go, and i haven't allowed myself to yet. That week felt . . . . . magical, too good to be true. It scares me. It shouldn't, but it does. I've never felt such deep down, low burning embers for another person, even during the awkward first hanging out times. It was like this sort of comfortability i've never felt with another person, beneath the essence, the flare was also there, the passionate longing for you, yet the separate coals warmed my bones beneath it all. it was like feeling with a separate part of my body. It was beautiful beyond recognition. But now i fear i missed the boat. I could have easily held on, but cared more about you than how things'll effect me. The ache still pulls at me each day. I miss you so much, but never regret letting you make your own decisions. Noone has been able to reach me through my madness, when i get into those mindsets, with everyone i give some automated response, but you sliced right through it, reset things so i could concentrate on allowing my thoughts to subside. 

I've never felt these things like this, and it seems like it's lost, yet there is still that piece of hope piercing through my will to let go. And who's to say? the future is unwritten. 

Business has been so fucking slow! I wish i had some sort of distraction. I can't wait to get back to the land of safety, leave zion and throw my thoughts into the beautiful life cycle. I'm speakin gibberish, my thoughts won't clear themselves up enough for me to be able to convey anything. Expression is locked somewhere in LA. I've been hiding away in my little brothers' room, drinking as soon as i get up in the morning and stopping until i can finally muster sleep. Ugh, sleep. I wish i could sleep so badly! And eating is so shitty. blah, i can't even imagine trying to eat something right now.  I can't figure out what to do with myself. I don't feel safe or comfortable anywhere anymore. I can't wait for it to pass. 

The battle with the unknown is a difficult one. it's hard to bring in rationality. its hard to concentrate on anything. even writing feels so pointless. But for that 3 minutes or whatever that i get a call, everything feels, clear, reset, headchange. I don't feel overwhelmed, things feel like they are okay, my logical process has a chance to subdue the madness. I dunno what i'm writing or why so i'm stopping now. 

The Big Ol' Mayne

It seems to me that preference lies highly on associations. If there is an association that something is good, or stupid, femine, masculine, anything, then it hinders on your ability to see something as it actually is. Associations seem to fuck with a lot of our basic view of reality. It's crazy, there are many associations that cling to my mind like a parasite, but they are generally short lived, and there are many more things that i can't even begin to understand. Like, "this isn't worth anything because its about crazy people" or gays, or love or most things. I can't associate things like that. That is probably why i love almost every book i read, why i'm down with almost every movie i see, except the ones that follow the lines of what is popular at the moment, those are too easily sifted through because there is no sustinance to their creation. Yes, maybe my head is a bit broken, maybe i do see things in certain ways and overreact to them. I do have impulses and thoughts of suicide. But I can also see such a more grand world than others are able to perceive. I can't change who i am. I feel like people are continually trying to get me to uphold some sort of structure of life, of who i need to pretend to be. We all seem to think that there is something we can pretend to be, no matter how far off it is from what we truly feel. Research even shows that girls will feel much the same way as guys will in any given situation, yet if they're given time to look back on it, their brain "fills in the blanks" and they view it as more emotional than if guys look back on it. But while it's happening we react much the same. Same goes with PMS, when girls are given something and asked how they feel about it during menstration, they react as they normally would. Yet when they look back on it, the social norms come in and invade their perception of the past to make them think they were feeling it as their PMS would indicate. This has all been proven. It's so crazy that we all try to keep these things intact, an outer shell of ourselves, never revealing our true inner selves. And yet, the people who are unable to uphold such illusionary tales of themselves are deemed crazy and are put on lockdown. Aw well, another day more learning. Its great how much there is to gain from each day to day moment. Time to finish this glass of wine and go to sleep.

B. Rake

Scientists and BPD

Scientists identify brain abnormalities underlying key element of borderline personality disorder

Date: Thu, 3 January 2008

Using new approaches, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City has gained a view of activity in key brain areas associated with a core difficulty in patients with borderline personality disorder -- shedding new light on this serious psychiatric condition.

"It's early days yet, but the work is pinpointing functional differences in the neurobiology of healthy people versus individuals with the disorder as they attempt to control their behavior in a negative emotional context. Such initial insights can help provide a foundation for better, more targeted therapies down the line," explains lead researcher Dr. David A. Silbersweig, the Stephen P. Tobin and Dr. Arnold M. Cooper Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and attending psychiatrist and neurologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The findings are featured in this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Borderline personality disorder is a devastating mental illness that affects between one to two per cent of Americans, causing untold disruption of patients' lives and relationships. Nevertheless, its underlying biology is not very well understood. Hallmarks of the illness include impulsivity, emotional instability, interpersonal difficulties, and a preponderance of negative emotions such as anger -- all of which may encourage or be associated with substance abuse, self-destructive behaviors and even suicide.

"In this study, our collaborative team looked specifically at the nexus between negative emotions and impulsivity -- the tendency of people with borderline personality disorder to 'act out' destructively in the presence of anger," Dr. Silbersweig explains. "Other studies have looked at either negative emotional states or this type of behavioral disinhibition. The two are closely connected, and we wanted to find out why. We therefore focused our experiments on the interaction between negative emotional states and behavioral inhibition."

Advanced brain-scanning technologies developed by the research team made it possible to detect the brain areas of interest with greater sensitivity.

"Previous work by our group and others had suggested that an area at the base of the brain within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was key to people's ability to restrain behaviors in the presence of emotion," Dr. Silbersweig explains.

Unfortunately, tracking activity in this brain region has been extremely difficult using functional MRI (fMRI). "Due to its particular location, you get a lot of signal loss," the researcher explains.

However, the Weill Cornell team used a special fMRI activation probe that they developed to eliminate much of that interference. This paved the way for the study, which included 16 patients with borderline personality disorder and 14 healthy controls.

The team also used a tailored fMRI neuropsychological approach to observe activity in the subjects' ventromedial prefrontal cortex as they performed what behavioral neuroscience researchers call 'go/no go' tests.

These rapid-fire tests require participants to press or withhold from pressing a button whenever they receive particular visual cues. In a twist from the usual approach, the performance of the task with negative words (related to borderline psychology) was contrasted with the performance of the task when using neutral words, to reveal how negative emotions affect the participants' ability to perform the task.

As expected, negative emotional words caused participants with borderline personality disorder to have more difficulty with the task at hand and act more impulsively -- ignoring visual cues to stop as they repeatedly pressed the button.

But what was really interesting was what showed up on fMRI.

"We confirmed that discrete parts of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex -- the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex areas -- were relatively less active in patients versus controls," Dr. Silbersweig says. "These areas are thought to be key to facilitating behavioral inhibition under emotional circumstances, so if they are underperforming that could contribute to the disinhibition one so often sees with borderline personality disorder."

At the same time, the research team observed heightened levels of activation during the tests in other areas of the patients' brains, including the amygdala, a locus for emotions such as anger and fear, and some of the brain's other limbic regions, which are linked to emotional processing.

"In the frontal region and the amygdala, the degree to which the brain aberrations occurred was closely correlated to the degree with which patients with borderline personality disorder had clinical difficulty controlling their behavior, or had difficulty with negative emotion, respectively," Dr. Silbersweig notes.

The study sheds light not only on borderline personality disorder, but on the mechanisms healthy individuals rely on to curb their tempers in the face of strong emotion.

Still, patients struggling with borderline personality disorder stand to benefit most from this groundbreaking research. An accompanying journal commentary labels the study 'rigorous' and 'systematic,' and one of the first to validate with neuroimaging what scientists had only been able to guess at before.

"The more that this type of work gets done, the more people will understand that mental illness is not the patient's fault -- that there are circuits in the brain that control these functions in humans and that these disorders are tied to fundamental disruptions in these circuits," Dr. Silbersweig says. "Our hope is that such insights will help erode the stigma surrounding psychiatric illness."

The research could even help lead to better treatment.

As pointed out in the commentary, the research may help explain how specific biological or psychological therapies could ease symptoms of borderline personality disorder for some patients, by addressing the underlying biology of impulsivity in the context of overwhelming negative emotion. The more scientists understand the neurological aberrations that give rise to the disorder, the greater the hope for new, highly targeted drugs or other therapeutic interventions.

"Going forward, we plan to test hypotheses about changes in these brain regions associated with various types of treatment," Dr. Silberswieg says. "Such work by ourselves and others could help confirm these initial findings and point the way to better therapies."


Source: New York- Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College

 

Dreamland

I had another weird dream that was much the same as the one i had previously, but this one was much more disturbing to me. Luckily this one made me wake at 230 in the morning, instead of having to start the day in such a state.

First it started with me hearing noises in the bus which aroused me awake. I open my eyes and see the angry's dogs(the yelling fellows across the street)right outside the window of the back door of the school bus. I already had a knife at the ready, open and in my hand. I tapped the window with it and the dogs scampered off. Then i was suddenly back in my bed, opening my eyes again because of noises. I got up to find 2 young male deer and 2 greyhounds at the front of the bus. I had no knife. I walked to the front, passing next to the deer, but not concerned with them. The greyhounds dashed out the front door. As i made my way back, i edged past the two deer that looked a bit frightened at my presense. I grabbed the first ones horns, more to sustain it while i got around it, but it jerked its head. Once i was in between the two, they were suddenly looming moose, or elks. The bunk bed was back, so i quickly hopped on there, for saftey. The Deer/elk/moose behind my lifted his hoof and placed it against my chest. Then i opened my eyes again, was back in my bed, because i could hear noises at the front of the bus. Well, I half opened my eyes, because now the extreme tiredness was setting in. I tried to sit up, i couldn't move. I was able to move my arm, grabbing the tiny strip of metal that is just about my sleeping spot and pried myself into a sitting position, all this time fighting to keep my eyes open, but mostly failing to do so. Once i was sitting up in this slumped position i opened my eyes to find i was in bed. I made the same maneuver, still fighting my bodies inability to move and attempting keep my eyes open by sheer will. Once i got the the slumped sitting up position, i opened my eyes to find myself back in the laying position. This repeated 3 times. The last of these three, I hear a boy saying 'sir, please help us' from just outside the front window of the bus. I made a high hmmmm noise which forced me awake. The last two, my noise and the boy happened so close to my actual wakening, that i was unsure which had actually happened and what was part of my dream.

Once i was fully awake and realized that there wasn't actually a kid outside the door, i was afraid to go back to sleep for quite some time. I refrained from taking another hit of sleeping medicine and put in a new movie to listen to to push me into sleep.              

I wonder what is happening on the oustide. Am i actually getting up, sitting up, my mind trying to force itself up while my body is still in sleep mode. On the fence of reality and dreamland.

Similarities of the two dreams are the main problems lay at the front of the bus, the things i'm trying to get away from. Being powerless to relieve myself of the things causing the problem. Resetting in an ultra tired daze, trying to get up but unable to even get up, let alone get away. Speaking to my body but it not responding, responding sluggishly. I know it's probably pointless to try to sort out meaning through the random firings in your brain that happen in your sleep, but the repetition makes it curious. As well as the realness of it, and a lingering feeling of unease. As well as how real it felt, how i reset each time in the exact same place as i laid down in, or wake up in.  

Unrelenting Nervousity

What an interesting day. I've had this uncontrollable nervousness that seems to happen every so often. I can't figure out what to attribute it to though. When i feel it, a trembling that roots in my solar plexus and vibrates out through my extremities. I felt lightheaded all day. This sort of thing may happen when i'm secluded from other people for long periods of time, allowing my mind to enclose and start cycling about with no release. The things i did out of the ordinary was sleep in, well, lay awake in bed for an extra 4 hours or so, drink 2 cups of coffe, which is actually up to the 6 mark on the pot, wake and baked to try to go back to sleep when i learned that i wouldn't be working today, and i can't think of any more. My nervousness could be attributed to the fact that my comrades will be back tomorrow. I don't know, but i wish i could releive myself of such symptoms.

Anywho, eating helped. I also went into the pizza room for a while working there, that was dope to keep my thoughts occupied, off of their normal routines they fall into. Then i spoke to one of my comrades and found that business went as expected, but a large percentage, about half, of money had to be dispensed. But, all in all, it was a good conversation and eased up my anxiety towards our later meetings. Anyway, the pizza i made for dinner tastes great and that is greatly appreciated by my empty bellie. Roke.

B. Rake

Perception

  So why would you allow a distant power to to make your decisions for you? We did not get to this point by listening to a far off tyrant, no we took things into our own hands. We are all individuals, it makes no sense to give our ability to make decisions to hands that put their best interests before yours.

            Think of all the things you're expected to do to be a real "person," or at least a civilized person. Take that expectation, subtract the idea of right and wrong, then logically decide if it makes sense. Should I start giving my child speed while he's in elementary school? Why does it seem ADHD was unheard of and suddenly m ost of the children in public schools are diagnosed and treated for it? Who benefits from this? Hospitals, physicians, prescription companies and the government. How will they be effected, depending on intoxicants, building a tolerance to those intoxicants. Sweet.

 

 

Noone knows who they are, their perspective is so skewed by their first person perspective that taking a step back out, they're able to see themselves better. But that brings us to the point of wondering what a person is. How do you define a person? I mean what perspective matters? You have a view of yourself through your eyes or one through other people's eyes, but, their perspective is also clouded from looking at everything as it relates to them. It must be a whole, including both worlds. So who a person actually is, is who everyone perceives them to be? No, because everyone's perception is lost because they place the starting point in themselves.

            Everyone looks out from themselves and see mostly what is pointing back at them. It's like filters. So you have what you think, it is created inside the filter and sent out. Another person has their own filter. If things in both filters are not similar then communication is difficult. The filter represents your prefixed ideas and associations. So something is created(o), sent out through the filter(#), then flows through their filter, and into their mind. But if their filter is shaped differently, which it inevitably will be with all the different conditions, then when it reaches the mind of the other side part or all of the meaning is lost.

Person -> o -> # -> o -> # -> @ -> person.

Make sense?