quote:

ORIGINAL: winterlight


i really don't eat it because it is bad for me. It has chemicals in it that aren't good for me...

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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
At the same time there is almost no disclosure as to the posters own medication regiment and weather they follow doctors orders on every item -

Also, I feel it only fair to respond to this bit honestly and openly.

I have no medication regiment. I have no doctor, whose orders I would otherwise gladly follow.

You see, my medical insurance has decided that, because my ex-fiances checked me into a suicide watch clinic 2 years ago after breaking up with me, I have a "preexisting condition". It took me 18 months just to reach the point where I even had medical insurance - I'm currently borrowing massive amounts of debt in the form of student loans, so that I can attend college - mostly so that I can feed and clothe and warm myself.

I'm certain that there is something very, very wrong with me. I might be bipolar. I might be autistic. I might be clinically depressed. I have no idea what's wrong with me; all I know is that the world often seems dark and sinister, and that other human beings often react to me as if I were some sort of martian. I know that people often tell me that they don't find me physically unattractive, but that there's just something "slightly off" or repellant about me at the gut level.

That, and I'm very, very lonely. I'm slowly trying to build myself a support network - I have a group of friends from college, now, who are wonderful people who check in on me and make sure I haven't killed myself, who make sure I can get out of bed and even sometimes buy me food when I'm penniless and haven't eaten in 48 hours - but I often wonder how much is friendship and how much is just pity; and I certainly wonder how I'm ever going to repay their kindness.

I used to be a Dominant. I used to have people call me 'Master'. I used to make $120k a year; I used to manage a poly household of myself and 2 beautiful women, with 2 more peripheral 'secondaries', all in one happy polyfidelous enclave. Now I can barely wake up in the morning, I can barely keep myself clothed and fed, and I can barely stand to look myself in the mirror.

But I'm not homeless, and I'm not friendless, and I'm not the victim of vast, impersonal forces. When government services refuses to grant me disability status, I don't think there are mind-control rays or sinister Illuminati conspiracies at work. When fifty people scowl at me as I walk to school, I think there's probably something wrong with my body language, not that they've all been replaced with reptoid duplicants. When I get audited by the IRS, I don't think that there's a vast global conspiracy to drain my pocketbook so that the NWO can take my guns away.

The world just isn't that organized. People aren't controlling my misery. That's the terrifying thing, I think - realizing that no one is in control; realizing that there isn't anyone to blame for what's happened to me. My ex-fiances didn't do anything malicious by breaking up with me; they did what they had to do when they saw the person in control of their lives mentally falling apart on them. My employers didn't do anything malicious by firing me; they did what they had to do to protect their business and the other employees from someone having a stress-related psychotic break. The world isn't out to get me, any more than it's out to get anyone. The world just is.

That can be pretty hard to swallow, but it's true. The world just is. The people out there aren't the enemy. They're just scared, cold, miserable, lonely little apes, just like you, desperately trying to make the world less scary and cold and miserable and lonely. Help them if you can, even when they're too scared and miserable to recognize what you're doing as helping. Accept help from them graciously when they offer it, because it helps motivate them to keep helping. All any of us have is each other, and if there's any dark and sinister undercurrent to human society, it's the fact that our modern technology and the pace of modern living often causes us to forget that.

All any of us have is each other.

It's going to be alright, if you let it. Things can be solved. Things can be made better. Did you know that 400 years ago, the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, couldn't demand strawberries in winter and get them? The emperor of a quarter of the known world could not ask for fresh fruit out of season. And yet today, in the middle of a cold and dismal February, I can walk 50 feet to a corner Food City and pay $3.99 - half an hour's wages for the lowest among us - and go home with three heaping handfuls of red, juicy, delicious strawberries. Not everyone can do this, and Guatemalan children had to slave in fields to pick those strawberries so I could pay my four dollars for them, but we're getting there.

Modern medicine lets us live to almost 80, if we take halfway decent care of ourselves. We can zap cancer with friggin' laser beams. We can cure blindness. We turn deaf people into cyborgs so they can hear again. And when someone like me is possessed by "bad spirits", instead of beating and burning and torturing them out of us, there's a good chance we can get little pills that quiet the screaming and the pain for awhile. They don't always work, and sometimes they hurt more than they help, but we're getting there.

The world isn't perfect, yet, but there are still amazing miracles everywhere you look. We're getting there. I'm not going to tell you that things are going to be okay, because you and I both know better than that. But things are going to get better. A lot better, for a lot of people. We can fix the world, even if we have to do it one piece at a time, even if it will take thousands of years and only our children's grandchildren's grandchildren get to see the final result. But we can still do something, and in the meantime, things don't have to look the way they do for you right now.

But the first step is seeing the world as it is. Not as we want it to be, and certainly not as we're afraid it is. Please stop jumping at shadows, and please stop asking us to jump at shadows with you. It makes it hard to listen to you when you actually have something important to say. So please, stop looking for horrible sinister reasons why your world seems so dark. Things are rarely as simple and black-and-white as you seem to need them to be. Things are rarely as controlled. The world isn't a narrative of good guys and bad guys; it's just a bunch of clueless apes trying to make a difference.

And sometimes that gets us strawberries in winter.

Good luck, man.

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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth
When fifty people scowl at me as I walk to school, I think there's probably something wrong with my body language

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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth
Now I can barely wake up in the morning, I can barely keep myself clothed and fed, and I can barely stand to look myself in the mirror.

having a stress-related psychotic break.

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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
you might want to look at that and ask yourself why it is that you're the only one people react that way to.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
I am type 2 bipolar with suicidal episodes, I take two anti depressants and a mood stabilizer. I am also on blood pressure medication.
I also have a bit of social anxiety disorder, at least that is what they tell me, since I dont like people that much. I prefer my own company, or a few very close friends. I avoid crowds and do my shopping at a 24 hour store after midnight.

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth

What anti depressants have you tried?

Do you need some?

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

You may recall as early as the 1950s they put subliminal messages in movies to make people buy popcorn/coke.

So here we are 60 years later.

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ORIGINAL: Rule
Interesting. Perhaps you have ascended? Are you extremely rational and logical?