The Schizophrenic's Creed

I am a schizophrenic

I didn’t ask to be one

I didn’t choose this life for myself

This life chose me

There are others like me who suffer as I do

But I am more than a statistic

I am a dreamer

I am a survivor

I am a warrior fighting against my past

My traumas are not my fault

I deserve better treatment from the world

Despite knowing this, my schizophrenia is still a part of me

It cannot be gaslit away

It cannot be prayed away

It is a disease just like any other

It’s no different from a fever

It’s a psychological cancer

The reason it exists is to destroy me from within

It has no other purpose

It is a curse I carry until the day I die

Hopefully, that day will come slowly

I have so much to do in this world despite my mind ghosts

I have people to love

I have art to create and consume

I have minds to change and hearts to care for

I do not know this yet and I may never know until it’s too late

But this world is a colder place without me and people like me

The world doesn’t love me, but I love the world

I’ll stay for as long as I can, even when my voices tell me lies

Amen!

Ghost

CHORUS 1

You’re just a ghost

With no love to boast

Gone with the wind

Are all of your sins

The shit in the past

Is never built to last

You’re just a ghost

Whose ass is toast

VERSE 1

If I wanted ghost stories, I’d sit at the campfire

Instead all I’m listening to is a fucking bad liar

Twisting the truth like the arms of your victims

Turning the strongest men into prison bitches

A haunted house isn’t good enough for you

A dark cemetery is where you’ll forever stew

Banging on the gates in search of your freedom

As if somewhere beyond is the Garden of Eden

CHORUS 1

You’re just a ghost

With no love to boast

Gone with the wind

Are all of your sins

The shit in the past

Is never built to last

You’re just a ghost

Whose ass is toast

VERSE 2

The spiritual realm has been calling your name

Like a chorus of boos stripping you of your fame

Like a necromantic chant in a sacrificial ritual

Like a street corner sermon of a sick individual

Consider this your one and only eviction notice

It’s extermination time for the swarm of locusts

There’s nothing left here for you to feed on

No more tortured souls for you to beat on

BRIDGE

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood

Burn it to the ground with gasoline and wood

If there’s a ghost in your brain that’s causing you pain

Flush that shit out and watch it swirl down the drain

CHORUS 2

You’re just a ghost

A parasite to the host

Gone with the wind

Let the new wave begin

The shit in the past

Is never coming back

You’re just a ghost

With no bail to post

FINAL LINES

You’re just a ghost!

You’re just a ghost!

Of all the hatred I could give

You deserve it the most!

Hotheadedness

***HOTHEADEDNESS***

I can count the number of travesties going on in this world on one hand…and the other hand…and my toes…and my teeth…and my hair. I may talk briefly about them online, but that’s about it. People always say that taking calculated risks is better than being passive in the shadows. They say if you don’t take risks, you haven’t really lived at all. Is that true? What if you choose to live safely because every one of your risks has ended badly? Am I suddenly supposed to live up to someone else’s standards of bravery by having more shitty results? Is it too much to ask that at least one of my bold risks pays 100% interest? So yes, I’ve lived in my safe place for several years now and I like it just fine.

Basically, what the failure of these risks boil down to is that I’m extremely hotheaded when it comes to confrontation and debate. Every time I’m challenged, my blood goes cold, my stomach feels ill, my mouth goes dry, and my Benedict Arnold of a brain shuts down when I need it the most. Once all is said and done, I dwell on these confrontations for several days, weeks, or even months. As I’ve stated several times, I’m autistic and schizophrenic, so that means a huge increase in sensitivity. The more sensitive you are to negative stimuli, the more you’ll want to avoid them.

If you were a psychologist trying to pick my brain, I guess you could say that the reason I love writing violent stories so much is because I secretly wish I could do those horrible things to my opponents. If I had the muscles and heavy weaponry of my favorite barbarian Deus Shadowheart, there would be a lot of dead bodies lying around. If I had the power of psychomancy like Tony Castle did, I could simply make my opponents feel just as sensitive and nervous as me. Writing violent stories is my own personal way of making gratuitous bloodshed legal.

But writing bloody stories doesn’t really solve anything, does it. Come to think of it, punching a guy in the face doesn’t do much either. Anger begets more anger. Hate begets more hate. While I realize how powerful of a force love can be, when I get into hotheaded mode, I’m not thinking about love. I’m either thinking about getting the hell out of my situation or beating some ass. I think even less about love when my schizophrenic mind shoves the incident in my face over the next few days and interferes with my life.

So there you have it, guys. Until there’s a cure for hotheadedness and oversensitivity, you won’t see me in the picket line or on the battlefield. Taking deep breaths does nothing, because while you’re trying to calm yourself down, your opponent will have already made the next move. And then you’re several moves behind and before you know it you’ve been bested by someone who is clearly in the wrong.

The best I can do for the cause is continue to write my bloody stories, pen heartfelt poetry, and vote my ass off. Sharing memes doesn’t do a whole lot, because let’s face it, nobody ever changed their mind because of a stupid meme. At least when I’m creating art from the shadows (a.k.a. “the safe place”), I’m getting some bang for my buck. What do I get for going to people’s houses and telling them what’s what? A black eye? A bruised ego? A bullet in my chest? Those would be preferable to an overly hot head. I’m not just talking about any hot head, but one that could bake a sheet of chocolate chip cookies.

I am by no means a cowardly person. I’m just a guy with awkward brain chemistry and too many lost chances. Even something as simple as applying for a job at What Culture could be considered a calculated risk. It could either mean a lifetime of writing kick-ass articles and being around funny people, or it could mean stressing myself out and not knowing what the hell I’m doing. Seeing as how I have a limited knowledge of pop culture, I’m guessing the latter of those two would be more likely. Why crash and burn when I don’t have to?

Living in a stress-free environment is paramount to the recovery of a mentally disabled human being; every psychologist will tell you this. It’s part of the reason why mental disabilities are grounds for gaining social security benefits: because working in, say, a customer service job would unleash the demons inside. While it is true that level-headed people feel stressed out at work too, disabled people feel it a hundred times worse. We can’t in all good conscious leave these people with no income, so that’s where social security comes in. That’s a talking point I’ll defend until the end, hotheaded or not.

Do I have the power to change the world? I don’t know, buddy, do you? Does anybody? Does any group of people have a loud enough voice to bring change to this mad world? Some people get noticed, some people get ignored. If everybody got noticed, we’d have a much happier world, wouldn’t you agree?

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

It’s a new week at the WSS and wouldn’t you know it, the admins used my prompt suggestion “Inner Voice” (I wonder how I thought of that one). My story this week will be called “Madhouse” and it goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1. Joe Fields, Artillerist Mercenary
2. Random Hallucinations

PROMPT CONFORMITY: One of Joe’s hallucinations is his inner voice.

SYNOPSIS: With bulky steel armor and chain guns mounted on either hand, Joe attempts to hunt down a bounty head in the middle of a bamboo forest. He stumbles upon a Japanese-style temple thinking that this is where the criminal is hiding. When he busts down the doors, he finds that nobody is there and he tries to leave. Instead of a clear escape, Joe begins having hallucinations of ghosts, samurais, ninjas, and other warriors attacking him at random angles. The vulgar mercenary begins to slowly go insane as he fights off these tormenting phantoms. Joe is convinced that there’s a conspiracy against him, but this belief only contributes to the degeneration of his mind.

FUN FACT: I guess Mr. Fields secretly has a hot head.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

I’ve tried twice to draw Knox from “Emoticon Artist”, but these attempts were met with me throwing both pieces of paper in the garbage. I’ll eventually find a good model for my orc warrior, just not tonight.

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Protesting is a lot like having sex. You can scream and be as wild as you want. You can even do it all night long. But if something starts to burn, then maybe it’s time to go to bed.”

-Trevor Noah-

Psychological Literature

Not every schizophrenic patient is going to grow up to be the next Henry Lucas. Even fewer autistic people are going to be the next Richard Ramirez. And yet, the stereotypes of mentally ill people are running rampant in the movies we watch, the books we read, the videogames we play, God knows what else. It doesn’t just begin and end with people confusing schizophrenia for Multiple Personality Disorder. Even I did that back in the day before I became the person I am now. I’m talking about stories on internet news sites that say a mentally ill person was shot by police whilst holding nothing but a cell phone. And then there’s another story where a mentally ill person refuses to drop a knife while staring out in the distance. And then there’s another story where cops shoot a suicidal depressed person. These mental illness stereotypes aren’t just ignorant. They’re changing the way we look at public policy and criminal law. It has somehow become okay to shoot a mentally ill person simply because they’re automatically classified as evil serial killers or sociopaths. What does any of this have to do with literature? I’m glad you asked. I always appreciate it when a published book manages to portray a mental illness with honesty instead of ignorant fear. There’s a recently released memoir on Amazon called “January First” by Michael Schofield that chronicles his struggle to raise a daughter with childhood schizophrenia. Yes, she has become violent and argumentative. But is any of it malicious? Hell no. Something’s happening to her brain that she has no control over. The aggressive voices in her head scream violent orders at her until she actually does them. And then the voices want more, and then the voices want more, and then the voices want more. Speaking as a schizophrenic who’s had it since my late teens, this is what an accurate portrayal of what the mental illness is like. It’s relentless torture using sounds and imagery that only exist within the patient’s world. It has nothing to do with being a serial killer or a rapist. While it’s true that there are some serial killers and rapists who were classified as mentally ill, it doesn’t say the same thing about the rest of the disabled population. We need more books that portray this sentiment accurately. And for God’s sake, not every PTSD sufferer is going to grow up to fill an entire town full of holes like Rambo did in “First Blood”. Yes, we’ll reach out to those who can help us, but only if those people recognize us as pain-wracked sufferers instead of vicious monsters.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“How can you just be yourself when you don’t know who you are? Stop saying, ‘I know how you feel.’ How can anyone know how someone else feels?”

-Dialogue from “Song of Myself” by Nightwish-

"All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome" by Kathy Hoopmann

When it comes to impatient readers, there are those with a short fuse and those with no fuse at all. For those of you with no fuse at all, my next recommendation is a picture book. Not another graphic novel, but an actual picture book with captions underneath each picture. Not the best way to engage your mind, but if you’d like a few “aww’s” to come out of your mouth, then I recommend “All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome” by Kathy Hoopmann. As a cat lover and someone with autism, this book appealed to me right away. Each picture has a cat in a precarious pose with a symptom of autism as the corresponding caption. For instance, a common symptom is obsessing over an object and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a cat dancing around with a stuffed mouse. Another common symptom is heightened emotional sensitivity and once again, there’s a cat dancing around, this time arching it’s back at a barking dog. If you want a full list of all the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders, then Wikipedia actually has a good article on it. I know some people are skeptical of Wikipedia articles being accurate, but as far as I know, no giggling pre-teens have messed up the page on autism. I could be wrong. But in any event, after you get done reading that article, just picture cats bouncing and playing around in accordance with these symptoms. This book is every bit as true as it is cute and cuddly. And for a picture book, it’s actually engaging when it comes to autism education. If only school was as warm and fuzzy as this book. But since it isn’t, we’ll have to order ourselves a copy of this book instead. It might also be good idea to get “All Dogs Have Attention Deficit Disorder”. I haven’t read that one yet, but since I’m always in the mood for a few “aww’s”, I just may order it someday. Ordering pretty much any animal slash psychology book from Kathy Hoopmann is always a good idea. Always.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do you call an anti-corporate kitty?
A: Occu-pie!