October In The Chair

at: http://www.mental-health-today.com/sphra/schizophrenia.htm


Schizophrenia and Nicotine
The most common form of substance use disorder in people with schizophrenia is nicotine dependence due to smoking. While the prevalence of smoking in the U.S. population is about 25 to 30 percent, the prevalence among people with schizophrenia is approximately three times as high. Research has shown that the relationship between smoking and schizophrenia is complex. Although people with schizophrenia may smoke to self medicate their symptoms, smoking has been found to interfere with the response to antipsychotic drugs. Several studies have found that schizophrenia patients who smoke need higher doses of antipsychotic medication. Quitting smoking may be especially difficult for people with schizophrenia, because the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal may cause a temporary worsening of schizophrenia symptoms. However, smoking cessation strategies that include nicotine replacement methods may be effective. Doctors should carefully monitor medication dosage and response when patients with schizophrenia either start or stop smoking.

When I came into work this morning, I moved my keyboard. Underneath of it was a pile of flattened out, shiny, purple metallic wrappers.

eh?

It was a veritable dragon's hoard of treasure and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what it was doing under my computer keyboard.

Then I remembered.

I had been saving them from the dark chocolate Hersey kisses I'd bought months ago and eaten over the same time period, with the intent of covering my monitor with them. One by one, maybe five in a day at the most. Some days without eating any. Carefully flattening out the eggplant coloured wrappers (some of them purple and gold checkered!) and sliding them under my keyboard for safekeeping.

Sometimes, I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

heh.

There are days when I get lost in my past, wandering around and reliving memories. All inside my puny skull.

I don't mean past, like just a few years ago. I'm talking about childhood. The things I saw and the things which were done to me. Looking back on them, I can kind of understand why I am the person I am today. Why my reactions are so sharp. And why I am so quick to believe that ever-pulsing (and growing) waves of disgust which course through my veins.

I was in sixth grade. Maybe seventh. We had off from school, for some reason or another. Maybe it was a voting day. I was at my "best friend's" house, her parents were at work. There was a whole slew of us hanging out, mostly boys because my "best friend" had the reputation of being a big slut, despite the fact that she was a virgin. Someone decided it would be a good idea if we got a ladder and climbed up to the roof. I was sitting up there, by myself, when they took the ladder away and wouldn't put it back. They told me to jump. They shouted ugly names at me. They threw things.

I screamed so loud and so long that someone two blocks heard me.

I was never afraid of heights before then. Now I am.

Feeling kind of squirrelly right now.

A manic phase, which has been building all week (probably from all the Red Bull I've been drinking) finally petered out with me hardcore cleaning my kitchen. At one point, my stupid ass was sitting in the sink and scrubbing the windowsill. I'm still not finished, though I am now exhausted.

There's a party this evening, in the bowels of West Philly, being thrown by one of the Engineer's co-workers. We've been invited. I'm going to know absolutely /no one/ there and this makes me skittish about going. I don't really care for parties to begin with, too many people. Now toss in the fact that I'm going to know exactly ONE person there and you've got a very ambivalent me. Though I suppose since I've drug the Engineer to enough social occasions where he didn't know a damn soul that it's just the universe's revenge on me.

Another thing to fall under the "only me" catagorey. I apparently now have a five year old stalker, at work. Some little boy called my extention today, absolutely convinced that he knew me. He wanted me to write his name down and when I asked if his daddy knew he was on the phone, he said yes. But, his mom didn't and I wasn't to tell her. He then also asked if he could call me again. And when I told him no, he told me he didn't like me. But, was going to tell his daddy that I was nice to him.

...

I'd clean forgotten about this, up until just now. My mind, the blank slate that it has frequently been, plucked it from the ether and deposited it into my lap. I was sitting in the overstuffed chair when his voice floated back to me, only me being the strange girl I am, I put a sinister spin onto everything. With the right inflection and intonation and a different backdrop, it would make a great scene in a movie. But, as I'm no director and have no designs on becoming one, this is just another film strip in my head that will never see the light of day. I'd write it as a story, but words wouldn't do it justice. It needs to be in a visual medium.

My eyes are burning again, as they have been doing more and more frequently. I don't know if it's the time of the year or the memories that come along with this time of the year. I've broken all my fingernails down and stripped them to the tips of my fingers.

And now, I sit here watching the lights on our wee tree flicker and scatter and fade and burn. Memories and images careen against the fragile walls of my skull. So many ghosts this season. More than usual, I would venture to say. I find dimes, constantly. Thee Pumpkin Girl told me of a Greek folk tale. Finding dimes is a sign of the dead trying to contact you. It's been happening to her, as well. But, who out of my veritable legion is trying to tap the phone? There's entirely too many of them to pinpoint it, nail it down and dissect their names.

'I still harbour so much resentment towards you', I said to him. His pointed face turned away from me in the dim and still light crashing in through a dusty window. 'For the things you did. The things you didn't do. All of it.' I blinked back scalding tears and pushed away from the table where we sat.

Job interview today. Which went decidely odd. The woman who interviewed me spoke rather fast and didn't ask very many questions. Especially not the one which I dread hearing (and always hear at every interview).

So. Tell me a little about yourself?

I really despise that question. It's far too difficult to squish a life as complicated as my own into a short and concise thirty second soundbyte.

Would you like to hear about how I was a drug addict in college and that was one of the main reasons why I dropped out?

Or would you like to hear about how I pull my hair out uncontrollably and unconciously?

How about a story of the time I found my father's crystal meth stash when I was ten? And all the unnamed feelings resentment fear disappointment curiousity which arose after that.

Maybe you'd like to hear about the horrid betrayals I've inflicted on those I love and those who have loved me, all because I'm too fucked up too understand that I am indeed capable of being loved.

How about this, I can tell you all about how when I was sixteen I got involved with a guy seven years my senior. And you'll get to listen to all the gritty details of how he lied to me and terrified me and stole my purityinnocencetrust. And about how I've never ONCE felt truly clean since that day.

I could even tell you about I'm afraid that my cat hates me because everytime he comes near me, I have to stick a needle into him.

Or maybe I can even tell you the real reasons why I want to be a mortician.

Well.

She didn't ask that question. And I didn't say those things to her. So, I reckon the interview went fairly well. I don't know.

The writeup of my weekend hasn't been finished, as some of you are quick to note. But, I just haven't felt up to finishing it right now. My brain is weary and I have entirely too much sensory overflow. Too much implant. This wee little brain can only hold so much.

So.

I rub my eyes and light another cigarette. Plug another song into my player. Today has been a day of searching for MP3s, but without knowing what exactly it is I'm searching for. I keep listening to "Dear God" by XTC over and over again. And every time, it kicks my in the heart.

I'm not quite sure why, really.

It's the strength of the words. The conviction found behind his voice. The pain. The sadness. And the longing for absolution and completion.

Things I can identify with all too well.

A talk with Thee Pumpkin Girl last night revealed that she re-met the scary zombie scarecrow on stilts and his friend, Head Cage Zombie (which you may remember from my account of my Horrorfind weekend). They recognised her as the "friend of the girl who ducked under the table when she saw us coming."

Apparently, they had thought I was just playing along. And were a bit confused and angry at The Engineer's reaction. Truth be told, I was only half playing around. And half scared out of my mind. When I am confronted by someone in a mask, especially when I don't know said someone personally, all the neurons start misfiring in my brain. I shut down and can only think one thing. flee.

I really can't help it, it's not something which I can control. No matter how much anyone tells me how ridiculous the act truly is. I couldn't explain enough times that night to everyone that I wasn't really just a big baby. Even standing there talking to Heb, as she wore the pig mask bought earlier that day, I couldn't take it. I would take a step back. And she, either messing with me or not understanding why I was stepping away, would take a step forward.

And I feel like a huge doofus because of it. That my reality is so askew in my head, that I can't even take something as simple as a Halloween fright mask. Especially when one of my greatest and truest loves in life is horror movies.

Ahh, but on the screen it is a completely different story. And it's a subject which I have been known to expound upon at great length. The safe scare which can be found in a horror movie. You watch it, snug on your couch or in your bedroom, completely content in the knowledge that it is fake. That none of this is actually happening to you. It still gives you a thrill to watch the atrocities which unfold on the screen, but it is a small and inconsquential thrill. At most, it only gives you a few unruly dreams.

Now, imagine being confronted with the same dreamscape. Only in the flesh. It's a different story completely now, isn't it? You see the person in the mask. You can touch them, if you so desire. But in your mind, back in the primordial recesses which are only rarely accessed, you fear. You giggle nervously and try to play it off.

It was humiliating, what I did. The diving under the table and screaming. It reminds of when I was younger and my brothers would chase me through the house wearing masks, with fake plastic knives. And how they laughed at me when I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours and refuse to step foot out.

This only multiplied, as I grew older.

Out of all the things which I wish I could change about myself, the one I hold most close to my heart and wish for the strongest, is the desire to be normal.

Normal and unbroken.

Expectation fills the air which I breathe. And I'm not entirely sure why. But, I feel as if I'm on the edge of a cliff. Waiting, just waiting for something.

It's not an unpleasant feeling, I don't think. It's just a stillness in the house. A hushed quiet. Like watching a clock's hands sweep slowly around its face.

I don't know if I'm waiting for an event, a communication, a sign. But, every so often my heart begins to race furiously in my chest and my hands tremble.

It could even just be a result of too much sleep. Sleep, with me, is either feast or famine. And lately I've been gorging myself at Morpheus's table. My days drift by listlessly, with early afternoon finding me still wrapped in my favourite blanket and a cat's purr rumbling quietly in my ear.

Hypersomnia, I am told, can be brought on by stress. The body is shutting itself down in an effort to preserve it. I sleep and sleep, only to wake feeling as if a truck has driven itself across my body.

In some ways, I wish it to stop. But, in others...my life becomes wonderous behind closed eyes. You still smile on my face. And you don't have a black demon gnawing its way through your guts. You live around the corner from me and you never existed. And I drift through this perfect half world with a whole and unbroken mind, free from delusion and weakness.

I'm going out to watch the stars.

cry.

All I want to do is cry.

There is this sick sadness welling up in my chest again. And I don't know where it's coming from. But, it's there. And it's a leaden weight for me to carry around wherever I go.

There is something inside of me that is struggling to get out. Only I don't know what it is. I can feel it fluttering and fighting against my bones.

Please.

make it stop.

My head is twisted round itself again.

Everything has been so screwy lately, it's finally starting to take its toll on me. Driving this evening to my father's house was a practice in desperately concentrating on the road and trying not to sob.

There's scratching at the walls again. I can hear you there.

I'm asked a simple and understandable request, my stupid paranoid head blows it out of proportion. I read someone's LJ entry about a case of horrid and sickening animal abuse court trial, and I'm left shaking and ill to the point of break down. I need to make more than two trips while out running errands and I growl to myself. Driving down the road, I convinced myself that I actually hit somebody and just kept going. I had to restrain myself from turning back to check. I also convinced myself that someone specific is reading this, just so they can find out what I'm doing so they can steal it.

Don't ask.

Do. Not. Ask.

And I know /you/ are reading this and laughing at me. You are, yes you. You sick fuck. Why don't you ever shut the fuck up? You never do. and it's all I can do to not shove a screwdriver through my ear to make it all go quiet again.

It's been so long since it's been quiet. I want that back again.

Back again, by candlelight. To Babylon, we go.

A short, sharp blow to the nape of the neck.