27/02/2020

Ooh gawd I am finding it hard to focus lately and commit my attention. I started another short story, which I can hopefully finish, but I feel as though a part of me had slowed down. I know that what I need, to speed it back up again, is to get into a routine.

I will get up tomorrow morning. I will set my alarm and get up by 8.30- I will get into this routine if it dam well kills me. It’s what I need, it’s what I’m craving, and once I’ve done it for a couple of weeks it won’t be difficult any more, it’s just the first few days or so which are the hardest. I keep thinking that one of the reasons I’m struggling to write at the moment, is that I’m not with Ru any more. All the time I was properly writing I was with him, and he was writing as well and so we could push one another, psyche one another up. My writing is mine though, mine alone. I know that in my heart I really do, I’m just using that as another excuse.

Whilst I was working at St Mungos I didn’t have time to write, and at the weekends I wouldn’t do much, so since Ru and I broke up last year at the end of March, and then I think I started working not too long after, it makes sense that for now writing it associated with those old negative emotions and memories. It will be like getting up in the morning, I just need to get into that routine, and then after a couple of weeks it won’t seem so difficult. I will keep setting my alarm, until I do get up. Tomorrow morning I’m going to get up and head into Croydon to get a hair cut which is a nice thing to do, so this will hopefully inspire me to get out of bed.

I just got a message on WordPress from Gemma. She was a lady I met on the blogging site I use, and I cut off communication with her over a year ago because I went to visit her with Ru and it was something of a disaster. My symptoms were really bad, and Ru and I had an absolutely hellish three days in Venice before travelling on to see her. It wasn’t the best plan, but all of my tic related stresses ended up being taken out on her as well. She is, to put it lightly and mildly, fairly eccentric. She’s older than I am, I think she’s about 60, and she is basically an aged intellectual. She is silly intelligent, and has very out there spiritual beliefs. She always used to praise me massively, telling me that she agreed with me about my out there opinions relating to my schizophrenia, and backed up my sense that there was a lot more to it than just what the doctors told me. She made me feel really special as well, she’d write me very gushing complimentary notes about the way I thought and the things I would write about. This always blew me away and made me feel special, a feeling I very much craved. Although I always used to wonder as well if she only said those things to draw me in. When Ru and I went to see her, I got the impression that she was lonely, and that she craved friendship, so I wonder whether she complimented me so strongly in an effort to hold onto me. Cynical perhaps, an idea born out of my own self loathing of needing to be called special. I always resented myself for how strongly her words affected me. She would call me a ‘great thinker,’ etc etc. I guess there are likely few fledgling writers who would be able to resist the urge to feel special when someone calls you thus and so profusely, but I walked a line between wanting to believe her and not being quite able to accept it.

The schizophrenia makes you feel special. This time around perhaps more so than last time, though I know that it is only my ego which inflates it larger than the message was intended. In fact I just had a notion, just a moment ago, that the underlying message this time around was that I was loved. This is not something to take lightly. There have been so many moments over the last fifteen years when I have thought, I just need to be loved, I just need to experience and feel true love, and I will get better. The tic related symptoms are all really a call out for love- although I was with Ru when these symptoms were happening, I don’t think he was able to give me the kind of love I needed. I think he eventually became terrified, and prior to that I think he idolised me slightly. I felt as though he couldn’t quite believe we were together, or that any of it was happening, though those may only be my subjective opinions. How does one tell, over a year after being with him.

So Gemma has messaged me, and it reminded me that she emailled me about a month ago. Her emails are generally long convoluted affairs, with so much in them I used to really only ever truly internalise about 30% of them. She is a convert of Steiner, obsessed with him. The little I know about him doesn’t begin to touch upon her knowledge, and she believes that through knowledge of him, and of oneself there are spiritual realms which are accesible to the average person. This was one of the other reasons why I eventually backed off talking to her, because too much of what she was interested in tapped into too much of my apparent “crazy.” Schizophrenia feels as though one is tapped into another dimension, or allowed access to another dimension. It seemed to me that I was chasing ideas, and beliefs which might not be sensible or balanced for me. However I was intrigued and interested, I would love to one day have answers for my experiences, some kind of clarity which I could feel in my heart was true. However I’m not sure whether that will ever be possible, or whether it is even something I should be chasing. I do still believe that the experiences I had this time, and the first time around were spiritual in nature, and this time around even more so. I’m convinced that I was in a shaky kind of communication with sprits, Gods even although I bow my head as I use this phrase because it doesn’t seem like something to be taken lightly. Although maybe I should on a level, I’m really not convinced about this yet. I think that I do- just as I’ve written that I had a thought that until I can take it slightly lighter, I may not progress.

I read a book called “The Art of Losing Control,” on holiday recently, and it uses the term an “enchanted world view,” and I feel that this best sums up what I believe. There is a brilliant passage, which I will copy and include here:

“In an enchanted world view, ecstasy is a connection to the spirit world. The animist cosmos teems with nature spirits, the spirits of the dead, deities and spiritual energy. The christian cosmos is created by God and filled with benevolent and malevolent spiritual forces. The human psyche in an enchanted cosmos is “porous,” to use the philosopher Charles Taylors phrase- our ego is a rickety old shed in a haunted forest.” [Jules Evens]

I love this passage, it completely sums up for me how I believe the cosmos, or world of consciousness and humanity, exists.

I guess that right now, there’s several things on my mind. One is that I would like to make my world view stronger, and perhaps develop it by learning more about other spiritualites and religions that there are. The second is that I would like to write something which reflects the experiences I have had, does them justice and puts forward some of my on ideas about them. I keep letting these ideas and messages get lost in the negativity, although they never truly dissapear.

I had the idea, years ago, that I’d love to found a new genre of literature, called psychotic literature, with protagonists with schizophrenia and bi-polar. It would be linked to fantasy and sci-fi, with plots roving into territory which wasn’t “real,” and Gods and deities linked to humanity, and the hero or heroine. I’ve started a few books, with ideas surrounding this territory.

I’ll get there, anyway my free-writing inspiration dried up 🙂 Laters.