Starting this off bluntly...
Well, I'm sure this isn't going to come a shocker to anyone, but I'm batshit crazy... Now, the term "batshit crazy" can entail alot. Are we talking pant-shitting, tin-foil hat wearing, screaming at random strangers crazy? Or is this more of the whole "dude has little regard for personal saftey and drinks way too much than is necessary at most social occasions" crazy? For me, the answer if none of the former, and only occasionally, a small bit of the latter. But aside from my occasional forays into poor decision making and public drunkeness, there is more to my madness than what is revealed on the surface.
Before I begin, I'm going to get this out of the way, right now. I hate bitching about my past, and any hardships I may or may not have faced. Going into some rant about this type of thing entails dredging up a lot of painful memories, opening a lot of old wounds, and usually ends in a trip to the liquor store and the consumption of more alcohol than what is considered drinking in moderation. Seriously, my liver can't afford another pity party. Beyond that, I don't like talking about the past because it's exactly that, the fucking past. I might not be over the damages done, but I'm definitely over what did the damage.
Still, for purposes of this entry, my life growing up does provide a little insight into whom I am now. So as a compromise, instead of going into some long, whiny rant about how shitty my life was, I'll just pull out the laundry list.
The Laundry List is, as follows: My childhood sucked. Mommy didn't hug me enough. Daddy wasn't around alot. Step-Daddy was an abusive fuck. The kids at school were mean. No one ever understood me. Santa Claus didn't give me a Stretch Fucking Armstrong for Christmas. ect. ect. ect. ad nauseum.
Simple fact of life here: You grow up in a shitty enviornment, you grow up into a shitty person. And they don't come much shittier than me.
There, does that paint the picture well enough? Good. Back to the subject at hand.
I've known I was pretty fucked up for awhile now. I just didn't realize how fucked up until a few years ago, during my cookie phase. I'd like to say that through the process of getting clean and rehab and all that, I came to this big, warm, and fuzzy life-affirming revelation about myself. But let's face it, I'm way too fucking shallow and self-absorbed for that shit. That bullshit if for the movies, and the movies this ain't. No, my big revelation came from the diagnosis and analyzation of the army of psychiatrists and social workers my insurance company decided to assign to me when I went on my baked good sabbatical (i.e. trip to rehab).
Now, I don't want anyone to misunderstand here. There's seriously being insane, and then there's just being a touch fucked up in the head. I definitely fall into the second category. I am at least passably functional in society. I'm not a serious threat to myself or anyone. I'm not going to suddenly snap one day and run around the city in a pair of assless chaps, wielding an assault rifle. While I'm sure that would make for a real exciting work day at the local news station, it's not going to happen. No worries in that department... I can't describe myself as insane. Insane applies to having perceptions so warped that they are truly out of sync with reality. If I were insane, I'd not even have the capacity to sit here and type down anything coherent and meaningful. Assuming, of course, you consider any of this coherent and meaningful in the first place. I firmly believe that anything I choose to say here is effectively emotional masturbation colored with a bit of intellectual chest thumping. But I digress...
There is a better word to describe me. A word the shrinks and social workers liked to throw around when they were having their little pow-wows about me. That word is psychotic. Specifically, in my case, mildly psychotic. What this means, as was perfectly stated in the film "Natural Born Killers", is that I know the difference between right and wrong, I just don't give a damn. Again, bear in mind the usage of the word mildly. As much as I joke around about it, I am a far cry from a full-fledged sociopath. I do actually have feelings, and on at least some level, I'm capable of compassion and genuinely caring about people. My issue is that for any of that to happen, I have to get through the wet mechanisms of my brain.
The normal, healthy human brain is basically the big fucking mess of neural pathways and firing impulses. Everything that you mentally experience is a combination of a chemical and electrical process; and for a normal, well-adjusted person, the process is very smooth. This is because most people have little to no neurological scarring. That is not the case with me. If you've ever seen the Costner movie (I think it's "The Man With No Face"), where he plays that english teacher with a heaily burned face, you should keep that image in mind and apply it to my grey matter. Because that's what it looks like. Seriously, my brain if fucking fried.
To be a bit more scientific about it, I have some moderate neurological scarring as a result of a lot of the shit I went through, which was only made worse by the years of drug abuse. There are a number of chemical receptors in the brain that are basically there to induce feelings of calm and euphoria, as well as to alleviate stress. Most people know these as endophin receptors, but specifically, we're talking about the seratonin and dopamine receptors. How they work is that when you are under conditions or stimuli that would normal cause a state of calm or joy, or situations that require a calming of neurological stress levels; these endorphins, seratonin and dopamine, are released and absorbed by the receptors in your brain. In my case, however, many of these receptors have been damaged to the point of being non-functional, thus resulting in a constant level of moderate neurological stress...
In layman's terms, my brain constantly thinks I should be pissed off, despite the presence of any reason that I should be.
As if that wasn't enough to deal with, I'm also diagnosed with bi-polar type II and borderline personality disorders. Of particular interest is one of the symptoms of borderline disorder; a dislike or being alone. Part of me doubts if this is an actual symptom. Being alone means having to crawl inside my head, and given all of this, being inside my head isn't on my list of fun things to do. Is it really any wonder that I don't like being alone.
Now, all this being said, I've started to come into a bit of a love/hate with my madness. The truth of the matter is, as much as I've learned to function as normal as possible, I'll be haunted by this shit till the day I die. For the longest time, I hated that. This is nasty shit to have strapped to your back, and all I could do is bemoan how unfair the world was for gracing me with it's mental and emotional excrement.
However, after awhile, you do grow up. I don't think anyone ever really wants to, but it happens. The instability and madness is still there, but if you're lucky, you might gain a bit of a balance with it.
The way I see it, I have three choices, two of which are highly unrealistic...
#1- I can try to shove this down, ignore this, purge myself of it, and hope that I can return to a wonderful bright world of blissful ignorance and candy and magical rainbow animals.... Fat fucking chance of that ever happening.
#2- I can just wholly give in to all of this, and just let madness overtake me. This, for everyone involved, is probably a really fucking bad idea. Do we really want to see a nude, bloodsoaked, 6'3" deranged irishman going apeshit with a pipe wrench on the 5 o'clock news? Don't think so.
#3- I can learn to suck it up, ride the waves, and maybe, just maybe, make this shit fucking work for me. Life gives you lemons, you hack that shit into slices and use it to garnish a Long Island Ice Tea. The way I see it, if I'm gonna be cursed with this, I'm going to have to make it work for me; and that means sucking out every ounce of whatever insight and creativity I can get from it. Fuck you world. You wanna make my mind the mental equivalent of New Jersey? See if I don't find a way to grow crops in that bitch.
So there you have it. An explanation of why I'm more fucked up than Charlie Sheen high on tiger blood, and more importantly, what I intend to do about it....
Now if only I could figure out where to fucking start.
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