Confuddled

 People rub off on me. It is ingrained within me to absorb other peoples' energies, and I spend time in my mind, precious real estate, going over conversations and experiences I've had with other people. I seem to be coming to the end, hopefully, of my obsession with the term that I spent with Aaron in 2024. That period was shockingly instrumental in shaping how I view myself. I have to admit  he made an impression on me, but it's more like chains that bound me and tied me to an older version of myself, one where his presence in my life was meaningful.

I struggle with day-to-day things like a hatred for my medication, and the constant annoyance of having tunes and songs play in my mind. I keep hoping that these infectious melodies will subside, and there are indeed periods of appreciated silence and quietude, but overall I can't seem to shake the curse.

Living alone and being introspective, I have the time and reserved inclination to remark on these things. I try to maximize happiness and efficiency in the use of my time by coming to terms with the deeply psychological realities of my life. I spent some times at the clubhouse today, which was essential because I craved stretching my legs and altering my scene. I am reminded of my time with Ryan, from the store, because he motivated me a lot and our relationship really opened up a lot of pathways within myself, in terms of gaining confidence to approach people and achieve.

I am looking into a trading program where we are taught to trade (strategies, techniques, etc.) and it seems like a pretty good opportunity, if one is interested in trading the financial markets. I am, but unfortunately I don't know about the timing because I am going through some severe repercussions of the side effects of the heavy medications I'm on. I see the doctor tomorrow and am hesitating now to tell her I want off, or to taper. There are positives but overall, as per some of my prior posts, I feel like shit most of the time.

Irresponsibility

 My mother, who drank herself to death a year and a half ago, always went through great pains to ensure that her children would be provided for after she died. She even set up a Hensen trust for myself, which is a fund that helps your child out when they have a disability, as I have.

My father, upon my mother dying from drinking, immediately abolished this Hensen trust and is now drinking away whatever money my mother had and had wanted to leave her children. I visited the colossal piece of shit in his apartment a few weeks ago. He had a small, $1,000 Persian rug which he had just acquired and for which he made a special point of showing me.

If you want to witness the destruction of a family, look to mine. Alcohol seeped its way into both my parents' lives and continues to dominate my father. But really, abolishing the Hensen trust is a huge slap in the face to myself. There was a large sum when my mother died, and I'll bet Howard is really blowing through it. He does not give a shit about what happens to anyone after he has gone. And because he is impossible to deal with, I have been forced to block his ass and can't communicate with him. Further, I probably won't see a penny of the family's money which had so carefully been preserved by my mother.

I will always be poor and disabled, but at least I can have some peace of mind when it comes to finally extricating myself from the relationship with my father. My sister is just as callous and cold-hearted, and has not made any effort to see me.

Venting

 Hell is a place on Earth, I am sure of that now.

With no money to enjoy my life and living in a cramped bachelor surrounded by crazies where all I can do is play video games and watch things on my computer, I know that I got fucked over somewhere along the way.

But my decisions led me to where I am now. Still, my mother driving me to the mental hospital at 4:30 am in 2007 really did it to me. I know I was 23, an adult, and responsible for myself but who could expect one's own parent would show so much lack of foresight and stupidity. And as proof of their dumb, asshole-ish ways, my sister is in the same boat as I am, unemployed and medicated up the wazoo.

But the good news is, there's only 30 - 40 more years of this bullshit for me, provided I don't die of the very common symptoms that these hardcore drugs that I'm on are famous for.

I'm Mentally Ill

 When I think back the days before my diagnosis, I feel I was doing some questionable things. Today, I don't necessarily like to accept I have this diagnosis, but I did act odd in the year before I was finally hospitalized.

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would be hospitalized, but I look back on the method in which that happened to me and it seems a bit odd. I never turned myself into the hospital, that choice was made for me by my mother. I hadn't slept in two days and came to my mother telling her I would accept help, but wound up locked up for 3.5 weeks.

Today, I can only take my medication and hope for the best. I wrestle in my mind in an endless throw of ambivalence whether or not I am actually mentally ill. Maybe my problems are deeply psychological, and not a physical "brain" issue.

I have to research this more, and look into books on the subject. However, lately, I have been into computer/video games. And spending time with my friend.

Paranoia, the strength

 Because I live a secluded life in public mental health housing (fun), I often use the blocking feature on my phone when people call me too much to ensure I have privacy and peace and quiet. This often offends people, and they disappear from my life. It has happened three times so far.

Because my family are temperamental and strict, they have not liked this strategy of mine. So they have all disappeared from my life. They treat me as though I were a normal, healthy person and not mentally ill (which I am). It is hard for a man to admit his mentally ill, let alone to do something about it and take meds.

Anyway, I guess I'm on my own. I can go through the rest of my life like this. What I don't like is the music in my mind. That started up when I started olanzapine, and pretty much is there most of the time. I call the bluff of psychiatrists, mentioning this phenomenon, and they invariably have no idea what to do. Psychiatry is a bit of a pseudoscience, I think diagnosing is more of an art than a science. There is no "test" for bipolar.

But then again, some people do seem fit into that category. I guess what's why it's called the diagnostic and statistical manual.

Kids

 I've blogged about my father a lot. The fact is, he's just a little child. It's weird being more mature than him, given that he's 78.

I have come to the realization that nothing I can do is really bad, since I am his child. It is expected that I will be less mature than him. Throughout my life, I have been made to be responsible for more than any child should. He has severe mental issues, and has taken it out on myself and my sister our whole lives. Add to the mix a severe dose of alcoholism and you have a monster for a father.

I don't think people really understand what it's like growing up with an alcoholic parent(s). You mention to someone that your father is an alcoholic, and unless they have been there, they are likely to just sweep that under the rug. "Oh yeah, my father has a beer in the evenings too." It's nothing like that. The bastard starts goes all day hard, every day.

I am basically going to have to forsake my inheritance because he's exactly the kind of asshole who will take it away at a whim. He doesn't believe in me getting anything. So, he will probably leave all the money to my kiss-ass sister, who gives him gifts to stay on his good side.

I have to make peace with the fact that he has basically robbed me of what should come down to me eventually. After all, he essentially robbed my mother of all her money, taking control of the "finances" early on. He spends all the family's money on himself. Drinks it and buys expensive rugs while I live in poverty and my sister is without an income.

Words can't express what a piece of shit Howard, my father is.

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

 So here's the thing. Aaron Mark, an Israeli who comes from a rich family and whom I knew as a child did some weird things to me.

This is a man whose upbringing was closely tied to my own. We were "tied at the hip" (as my mom used to say) from age 2 - 11. We followed similar trajectories into adulthood (although his family was always rich) including going abroad for University and winding up with "mental health" difficulties and being in and out of psych wards. He's a man I had thought I would never see again. But low and behold, fresh out of the psych ward again (for dubious reasons), our paths crossed in the summer of 2024.

I found him odd, and later terrifying. His allegiance was always to his family because his Mom supported him, and probably continues to support him. A 41 year-old man.

I had always assumed he tracked me down on social media since I received a message from him on the shit site "LinkedIn" saying he had been trying to find me. Little had I known at the time that I had actually sent him a message on "Facebook", and even shittier site, months earlier while in a sleepless manic/psychotic site (I have picked up the habit of sort of "diagnosing" myself with these psychiatric labels - in any case, there were periods of little to know sleep where I did some questionable things). Aaron Mark never mentioned he was responding to my original message.

In any case, after connecting via the phone (I naively gave him my number), he started asking me if he could send me gifts. I have gone into this in previous posts I believe so I won't belabor the point but some shitty things happened that really allowed him to gain my temporary trust or at least work his way into my confidence.

The point is, this is a scary man. He behaves the way I used to behave, in the late 2000's and 2010's. I never could quite put my finger on what his motive was - what he wanted - for the 6 or 8 months that he was in my life (this included showing up at my house at 4 in the morning as I have mentioned earlier). I can now deduce two things. 1), his allegiance was always to his family, never to me (for reasons such as his Mom was supplying him with money. Not a friend, but a predator who was playing with my life (I am ashamed to say). 2), his mental state was of the hardcore type in which "the ends justify the means". This man had some kind of goal in place, and he was determined to reach it. The goal had to do with me, somehow.

In other words, and I don't like playing the victim, he had some sort of purpose with myself and I was victimized.

As proof of the first point, that his allegiance was not to me, he quickly disappeared from my life last winter (after, pathetically, I beat him in an chess game online. Some people go away when you beat them at chess, a game where if one's ego is present at the board a loss can be devastating). So, no commitment or sense of long-term purpose in our "relationship". He vanished, never to be seen again. With no goodbye.

I have subsequently accidentally called him with no answer. I think I left a message to. The man did not want to provide any kind of closure, but what do you expect from a disturbed man-child. It was confusing though because he looked like an adult, and even had the tendency to speak like one, although perhaps he was employing the strategem of mirroring what I was saying. Come to think of it, every one of our interactions was a private one, between myself and him. There was never a group setting really where I got to see how he performed in front of other individuals.

My main thesis here, is that he had a target and was using the philosophy of "the ends justify the means". It took him months, but he finally worked out what he wanted to do with me. I believe it was for me to be medicated (perhaps at least as much as he was). Having gone back to the psych ward during the period where we were connected through various communication channels, he basically won.

Now, does the end justify the means? I subscribed to this attitude post-2002 when I was full of anger, hate, and youthful energy. It caused me to behave like a piece of shit to a lot of people. I have now since rested and have had time to reflect on how to be a good, better person. But unfortunately, the aftermath of my "Aaron" encounters have left me medicated beyond belief. I followed the wrong person and got sucked into the wake of someone who (though hard to tell since I expect there was much dishonest) had very little reason to go live and who's presence and ego were dangerous and scary.

It was my father who actually warned me and cautioned me to not get involved with him and to extricate him from my life. It was so confusing because he had been there when we were young children. A dark cloud hazes over my memories from him because of our more recent interactions (see my post "Black Tar" for a psychological picture of what it was like to have him around).

Life can toss us around and do bad things to us and we often react in certain ways. Having had my heart broken in high school, I turned to a very dark place which would forever taint me and shape me in certain ways, causing me to harm myself and others. I can surmise that Aaron Mark was in a similar place but hasn't waken up yet. I feel betrayed, exposed, vulnerable, hurt, and a little pissed off and disgusted with myself for having had him enter my life. I am trying to view the good things. He cited "love" as a reason for our friendship more recently. I am growing to dislike psychological talk, but I am trying to psychologically work out how on Earth we were ever connected at one point. I see him as a time capsule of myself, perhaps, when I was lost, confused, grasping for a life vest, and willing to take down whomever was around to prevent my own self from drowning, or simply to get ahead.

Without closure, it is difficult to think of what we can take that is good from a relationship. I don't have a family, and he does, so he is off enjoying the princely state of going on walks and taking in the luxuries of the life afforded to one who has a father who is a machine in business and is willing to provide his son with all the necessities, including a house and unlimited cash.

I have to think how I am now. I am medicated up the wazoo and had a run-in with a psychotic Israeli fuck who had a place in my past. The side effects of my lithium and olanzapine alone are enough to make anyone cringe. The recovery that I was attempting to do on my own before adding these powerful meds to my regime seems something of the past. I am moving forward as best I can but am haunted by the aforementioned memories.

The thing is

 I feel torn apart inside. I feel suck in a deadly, vicious trap of having to take 2 anti-psychotics and 2 mood stabilizers every day for the rest of my life. It does not feel right. It feels artificial somehow, and this all started in 2007 when my mother drove me to the psych ward because I was complaining about some anxiety. They kept in me in the ward for 3.5 months and put me on these drugs.

Now, 18 years later, I still haven't worked (I lost my job), I have no friends, my family are assholes and so I am estranged from them, and I have very little going for me. Psychiatry is awful. According to Tom Cruise, it should "be outlawed". It ruins lives. My cousin killed himself after having gone through a similar thing to me.

If you had asked me what is the worst thing that could happen to you, what are you most afraid of, back when I was a child, I would have said getting locked up in a mental institution. My stupid bitch mom made that a reality.

I've come to realize though the problem is just that I have shit parents. Bad luck of the draw.

But what do I do about that? How do I take ownership for my own life and move forward? The only victory I can see for myself is to somehow get off these drugs. I was thinking of reading Laura Delano's book as inspiration. Of course one of the supremely annoying side effects that I have of these drugs is I have music in my head all the time.

I can't live the rest of my life on all of these "medications". It just will not lead to a happy life. I'm pretty much stuck, though.