deep sleeper

It's been far too long since I last updated here. I've forgotten what I'm supposed to even use this journal for.
I keep forgetting letters in words and repeating things and mixing up spelling. My typing is starting to match my thoughts, my speech. That shouldn't be happening. What has happened to me?
What a shame, what a desperate terrible shame, that I've been forced to sacrifice so much of myself.

I promised Laurie I would talk to her about this, but... but I'd like to mention things here too. I haven't been able to 'connect' with my own mind very well lately, so maybe this will help fix that problem a little bit.
Let's see... you last heard from me on August 15th. My memory isn't very good, but let's try to fill you all in here.
Two days prior, on August 13th, I met Josephina, a 'new' headvoice. He's mentioned in that running entry from July 22 if you want to read up on him. By August 21st (earlier?) I was back in PA, and was staying at my father's rented home due to his saying 'I should be there' and my being too afraid to face the rest of my family yet. Unfortunately for me, I became horrifically sick there due to lack of sleep, lack of means to work, and lack of food I could eat without having a major reaction (I was basically throwing up everything for two weeks). I managed to get out of that house about 4 days later, thank God (which was very stressful and caused my father and his gf to start shunning me for a while), but by the time August 27th rolled around, I remembered that my 'home' wasn't home at all. I just couldn't get out of it.
I'm still stuck here... my memory is shot, because honestly, all I can do here is work on my laptops. I have nowhere else to go.
So it's October 4th. I just read two books, 'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon (which, although upsetting at times, had some great points) and 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer (which I found highly overrated and deeply unsettling). The latter distressed me so much that I've been writing a rant on it for the past two days.
Other than looking for knowledge in books and desperately searching for a new therapist (I may have found one, but she's almost 3 hours away, and since she's a gender therapist I'd have to make the drive by myself and my family forbids my going anywhere alone), I've also quit my old job. Yes, the cashier job I've had for 4 years. Why? I couldn't handle the atmosphere anymore.
As you may know, I can only take so much outside influence from people before it starts to negatively affect me. 4 years of standing at a register for 7+ hours at a time and dealing with people buying junk food and spitting small talk really began to eat at me. I can't deal with people anymore.
My grandmother hates that about me. She can't understand that not everyone is a social butterfly (despite her never leaving the house or talking to people because 'she doesn't want to bother people'), and insists that I 'get out there and mingle,' whatever that's supposed to mean. I was diagnosed as a schizoid two years ago and I'm constantly reminded of that. She can't understand how difficult it is for someone of my mental state to deal with 'regular' people. I quite simply cannot handle it any longer, at least not without heavily damaging myself.

What was I saying... I don't even remember. I'm starting to get acutely frustrated with myself again.

Since I lost my job, two things have happened. One: I'm constantly being bombarded by my grandmother's shouting at me to get a new one, regardless of how many conversations we've had concerning why I can't get one yet (I was kicked out of college for being unstable, and now I'll be haunted by that on my record forever-- I don't want to be fired from some random job and have that following me too). I want a job, and I need a job, but I need one that I can handle without psychological or physical distress... and yes, my grandmother knows about these problems, but instead of actively acknowledging them and trying to help me work with them, she has flat-out told me to lie about them to any future employers. I don't even want to think about it as it's starting to seriously upset me again.
Second: My brothers don't get home until 3PM, so I have about 3-4 hours of time I can safely use by myself every morning (if I'm lucky and my grandmother doesn't shout again). Last week I spent those hours playing Nier on the XBox.
God only knows how much I love that game, nowhere to lie. I cannot possibly put it into words. The main character is me, I swear... and I love my daughter, I truly do. Weiss is amazing, Emil is adorable, and even Kaine is a sweetheart, even if she does act like a hussy sometimes. Sure, their world may be suffering, but aren't we all suffering here as well? At least there, I can do something meaningful; I can help my town and I can save my daughter and I'm not going to give up. I can make a difference. Here? Nothing... nothing yet. Who can say if I'll even survive long enough?
My family doesn't understand how strongly and deeply that game affects me. My grandparents see it as a waste of time. My mother couldn't care less either way. My brothers see it as just another game, the way most people see anything. I don't like watching movies with people, I don't like reading books with people, I don't like listening to music with people, and I don't like playing games with people, because no one else really understands how much they mean to me. When you laughed as I cried, it hurt more than I can say. When my parents say 'it's just a book,' they're lying in the face of truth. When they tell me there's nothing to love in those notes I adore, it tears me apart... and when I'm holding that controller and watching my life play out on the screen, having people in the room treating it as just another game to beat kills me.
It's why I'm so afraid to bring my children into the world.
I love them so much. They define my life, and I thank God for them every day... but will anyone else love them like that, truly? What if they become corrupted? What if the world misses the point?
It's worth the risk, you might say, and maybe it is... but at the end of the day, as I try to sleep, I'm haunted by the thought of my children suffering at the hands of others. If I knew they were being hurt, that they were being manipulated and misrepresented, it would destroy me. It would destroy me entirely.

I don't remember Utah... well, I do, but it doesn't feel like it.
I know what the houses look like. I remember Wisconsin, the plane trips, those awful Chicago streets. I remember the library and the temple and the sushi bars.
But... I don't remember you.
For some reason, the faces and voices and mannerisms and presences evade me. I saw a photo of you earlier today, and I didn't recognize you at all. I had to think, 'what was she like?'

It hurts to say it, but the reason I wanted to leave you so badly-- the reason I couldn't stand being around you anymore-- was that I realized you had been lying to me without even knowing.
I don't know either of you. I thought about it, and I cried, because who are you, really? I know your names and that's all, really. I know you like the color yellow, and you like role playing, and you like Miyazaki movies, and you like cats, but even then I have to strive to think of anything. The truth is I don't know you, either of you, at all.
Why else do you think I write these journal entries, these pages and pages worth of confessions and secrets and thoughts? Why else do you think I explain everything I can think of up front? I'm asexual, I'm a schizoid, I'm in love with a video game character, my superego is my best friend. FROST* is my favorite band and I still play Pokemon. I don't like this book and I like this movie and I love this game.
I want people to know me. I fill my Scribbld with surveys and my OKCupid with tests so people will know me. Aren't those just little things, you ask? Sure, but little things mean a lot too. We are the sum of all the little things.
I thought I knew you, but I was wrong. I knew what I hoped you would be, and I was too naive. I projected my own ideals onto you... I didn't even think of the little things, and how we differed in so many of those ways. I met you in 2007, we both liked NiGHTS and ELO, and we became friends... but I thought you were like me. I only knew you through notes and Skype conversations in which we talked about abstract concepts until all hours of the morning. I didn't even know what you looked like. Then in 2008 I thought that I was 'in love' with you... but even then, I realize now, I was wrong. It's a horrible thing to realize, but I have to admit it. I loved what you did, not who you were, and it was terrible. I loved your writing and your ideas and the fact that you were the first real friend I had ever made. I didn't realize that you were more than Demia and Richard Jacques and philosophy. I didn't realize that because I wasn't like that. I had no way of knowing.
I define myself by what I do. I like Razia's Shadow and psychology and Hokthai. If you like those things too, then we're good. I didn't realize that you can't love actual people like that.
When I met you in Utah earlier this year it hit me. I didn't know you, and I used you. You tried to be nice and you were too physical, so I objectified you and pretended you weren't a person, you weren't a threat, you were simply a script to follow. And then you left and I ran to the mirror and I mentally sobbed because I didn't know what I was doing to myself.
It was worse with her. All I knew was that she liked to write, and I fell in love with that. I wanted to lock myself in her room and read all her books, but that would have been wrong... I didn't know what was behind her writing, and I couldn't understand it the way she wanted me to. I couldn't understand her. I still don't.
Is that what all writing eventually becomes? It is good or bad that we must surrender to the opinions of others? How can we preserve the truth of our thoughts?
Still, I wish I knew both of you better so I could fix this. I'm seriously glad I'm not 'in love;' you know how negatively I react to that outside of the conditions I need... but I still love both of you as friends, although you feel more like total strangers than anything else.

I'm frightened.
Most of the people I love, I don't know.
I love Dori's words, and although they help me know her, do I really know who she is? I'm not even sure what she looks like. I know she has brown hair and she likes Silversun Pickups and thought-provoking discussions and fireflies. I know she used to wear her hair in a ponytail and she loves lilacs and she has snakebite piercings which are awesome... and yet, despite all of those little things I have learned to love, I still don't know anything else. What is her life like now? How much has changed? I only know her through her journals, and they only say so much.
I love everything Jena does... her words, her photography, even the music she listens to... but I don't know her, not beyond her work, and it brings me to tears. Is it right to love what she creates and attribute that to her as a person? Does anyone else even do that, or am I deluding myself? I'd be happier if people loved my work instead of me, but I can't speak for others.
I know her face, I've seen the world through her camera lens, but I've never heard her voice. I don't know what keeps her awake at night and I don't know what her childhood was like and I don't know what her favorite song is or why. I don't know her favorite memory or her worst nightmare or dearest hope... but I know about her raven hair, about the window cluttered with flowers, about too many chocolate Santas and standing to bow. I know how she is sometimes happier thinking than living. I know about the golden flower necklace she wears, and the rings on her fingers. I know the colors of her eyes. I know just enough to keep me praying and hoping and dreaming that one day I'll know what her laugh sounds like.
But isn't that real love too? Knowing the little things, the pieces of the puzzle, and loving them so much that you need to know more, to understand the entirety of that person, to hear their story and paint their picture in your mind with every detail in place?
I don't need romance and I don't need a fairytale ending. All I need is to be able to love. Thomas Schell was wrong-- people don't want the idea of love. They want real love, but how are you supposed to let people know that? Everyone needs it, but who's to say how many really find it? If they want anything, it's not an idea... it's a hope. Maybe someone out there does care.
I want to be that person. I am that person, really... at least I try to be... but there's that final roadblock I don't know how to get past. Do I stay a baseless concept? Is that the better option? Does anyone ever really expect those hopes to be proved possible all along? If I love someone more than words can express, but they don't even know I exist in such a way, do I let them know?
Do they want to know?
Is it better this way?


On a different yet related topic... back in Utah, when I had fragmented into Jayce and typed for about an hour... I loved that. It was awesome.
I finally remembered how that happened in the first place, and it was explained right at the entry's beginning all along.
"You do not understand that when events, when certain fragments are taken out of the context of my internal life, my introspective world, they lose their meaning. They become false, twisted, wrong."
The both of you kept trying to take things that were important to me... my work, my interests, even the strange and personal things... you kept trying to make them 'your own' in some weird sense. You would try to take them on and give them to me, show them to me, although they were never yours to begin with and all I saw was a travesty.
But I played along. I played along, I pretended everything was fine, my children were frightened and I was devastated, and I still just followed that forsaken script.
If I may warn you one final time... don't EVER do that to me again. Please. If there is something I hold dear, something I revere, something I find incredibly important... do NOT try to emulate or copy or re-enact it. That does nothing but take the original thing, the vital thing, and deface it. You have desecrated it.
I have not been able to work, or sleep, or think, or function as I used to since I returned, because so many of the things I treasured have been massacred.
The worst part is that you didn't even understand. It is because you all hide your emotions? What is that about you, about so many of you out West? Why do you hide what you feel, and chase away sadness with laughter? Why do you mask what is important with a smile instead of being true to yourself? Don't you realize how much harm that is causing?
Why do you pretend nothing is wrong when nothing is right? Why do you sweep the truth under the carpet? Why did I let you change me into that same sort of person? Why am I afraid of standing up to you?
I don't understand.

When I say I am frightened, I do not mean that in the way a child is frightened of a dog, or a doctor, or a haircut. I mean it in the way that one is frightened of a black hole.
It is something I do not understand, no matter how hard I try-- that I may not ever be able to understand, I fully realize-- and it is something that can harm me nonetheless, whether or not it knows.
That is truly frightening. You have hurt me, both of you, without even knowing you were doing so. You cannot understand how it keeps happening, even when I try to explain, and the entire time you are still pulling me in, destroying one piece of me at a time, until I am left with nothing, and resign to being a dim shadow of you. Then you smile because that is fine.
It is not fine. I may pretend it is fine, but only to spare your feelings, which I know you are hiding as we speak. I do not hold this against you, as it is not your fault, but it is still tearing me apart.
Do you see why I left? Why I cannot go back?
I cannot live my own life when I feel I am supposed to live according to yours.
I am trying to remove all negative influences from my life, whether they see their influences as negative or not. I am sorry if I offend but it must be done.

Yet at the end of the day I keep handing out second chances.
Am I a good person in any respect? Is retrying beneficial when it only places us both in a position to be deeply damaged?

I was right to come home, and you were wrong to keep me. I realize that now.
You are better off on your own, you say, and I am happy for that. But then why did you want me to stay? Did you even know?
I have made great progress out here, regardless of suffering.
Did you know I spoke to a priest about your demand? How you wanted me to stay, lest I regret my decision for eternity? He told me to do what I felt was right.
The world is in shades of grey, they say, and although there are blacks and whites, my decision was not one of them. I felt I should return to my family. Was that wrong?
I don't regret it, no, but I don't understand how you made the decision so life-and-death, so black and white. If I was right after all, then how could you have been wrong, if you were so sure? Did you get a detail wrong? Did you apply it wrong? I can't help but feel we missed something. You wanted me to stay, but why? Did you ever have a reason why?
Faith is vital, but reason is vital as well, and there should never be conflict between the two. Reason without faith cannot stand, but neither can faith without reason.

Why am I so paranoid?
Why do I read words from around the world, from all walks of life, and assume they are all accusing me?
I hear songs and watch films and they all glare into my white eyes, pointing a damning finger at my aching ribs. You are at fault. You have done wrong.
Have I? What have I done? If I knew, maybe I could change things, but I never know. I find blame in situations I have never been involved in.
When did I ever say I was 'above' others? Is it how I present myself? Is it in the words I speak?
If I speak out against the misdoings of another, it is not because I feel superior-- it is so I can warn others, that they may not suffer through the pain such actions will cause.
If I speak out against things I have been damaged by, it is not because they are below me-- it is because I know how they hurt, and I want to protect others from them.
If anything, I am one of the very worst. I consider myself one of the lowest sinners, and even then I hate myself for saying so. How does that place me above the saints? How could one possibly interpret it as such?
I have done terrible things, and I have not done wonderful things, and I drown in my agony. The past cannot be changed, but why did I have to be so foolish? Could not I have made a better past?
I try to be a righteous person, but I do not exalt myself for this. If anything, I shoot myself down, for my efforts are not nearly good enough.
When I see someone who is perceived as righteous, I do not put them down, nor do I put myself above them. I simply worry if there is faith to their reason and reason to their faith. Do they understand the rules and concepts they are living by? I worry about them is all. I want to help them if they need help, although I freely admit I am nowhere near a good role model. I simply want to help. How is that exalting myself?
Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
In a way that's a good thing.


I feel that maybe I can get some work done today, with getting my notes for Dream World solidified into the actual chapter. I have, what, 130 pages of unstructured dialogue and location points and concepts to fix? It's a ton of work; it's my life's work, and I love it more than anything else in this world.
I judge material possessions by whether or not you'd take them with you, instantly, if your house were burning to the ground. Would I go for the books and CDs and childhood toys that my mother seemed to think were so important? No, I would grab the box under this very desk, with my old art tablets full of monsters, and put my flash drive around my neck if she wasn't already there. That's all I would need, in terms of 'material' things, if the house was burning. It's what matters.
It's odd, though, and beautiful, how I look back on what I've been blessed with that so many others have looked down on. As a young child I met Cobra, and Fans, and Unisalia, and Zimbo... 'imaginary friends,' everyone else called them, but they didn't understand, and that saddened me. How could I explain to them what it was like, to lay down to sleep and watch them sing for me? To be walking outside and talking to whoever decided to accompany me? How could I help the world see the beauty and inspiration those friends gave me?
I grew older, just a little older, and Preludove came into my life. She is, I have no doubt in my mind, a gift from God. Who better to send me than Peace herself? I had no friends as a child, other than the ones 'in my head,' but they meant the world to me. They taught me so much... while my grandmother tried to teach me her religion through tales of fire and brimstone and prejudice and withheld forgiveness, Preludove helped me realize that it was the Light that really mattered. Virtue was what life was based upon, she said. You have to be kind, and loving, and hopeful, and righteous. You have to be peaceful and joyful and courageous and true, and you must always hold on to those things, no matter what. Keep a light in your mind and a light in your heart, and don't ever, ever hate anything.
I met Hosea and Volt and Genesis and so many others as the years continued on, and to my surprise, they all seemed to be exactly who I needed in my life, even if I didn't realize it for several more years. Who would I be today if not for them? I can never forget them, and I will never take them for granted.
...And I cannot keep them to myself.
I am scared, sure, because I have seen them hurt before, and few other things in my life have ever been so painful.
Where there is great light, the shadows are deep.
The darkness, the negative things in this world, will always seek out the brighter and positive things, hoping to corrupt them, to blacken them. It's how the world works. What could ever be truly good if there was no knowledge of the bad to balance it against? It's painful, and it's difficult, but in the end, to overcome those shadows is the greatest achievement you can ever have.
I suppose I simply need to take that chance myself, because this is the greatest light I can think of. There will be darkness, I know that. There will be obstacles. Yet there will also be moments that will make it all worthwhile, and if I finally have that chance to show others the beauty my own life has been blessed with, I would be a fool to let it pass me by.
I need to overcome my fear.


I suppose I should close up for now. I have far too much work to complete to spend my time on here, no matter how much I like typing about whatever comes to my head.
I'll try to update more often.
Until then, keep on keeping on.








There are many ways
But you have to choose yours
To know what you want
And what you’re gonna do

Take your decision soon
Life won´t wait for you
If you waste time
Your chance will pass away

Don’t lose your track
Don’t let you be gone
Don’t lose your light
It can’t go out

Choose your side
Choose your way
Don’t let them hinder you
Choose your side
Choose your pain
But never stop trying
Choose your side

If you wanna be free
If you wanna fly
Make your route
And don’t let them conduct you

Never lose yourself away
Never give up
Go ahead
You’re strong

One day you’ll have wings and will fly
Go ahead with strong steps
Your time will come