The Mental Degradation of K

I've tried many times to avoid writing this out; as I find it hard to do such. Aside from all the chemical alterations I subject myself to, there's a great deal of context and years of experience to delve through to even ground a reader into some framework of commonality. How could I expect anyone to understand me if I am not at least somewhat similar to them? I'm so far removed with my diagnosis from the average mental health sufferer, let alone the general public.

So, through this telling I'll be K. I wish to discuss my hallucinations, as I am of the firm belief it will be beneficial for me to work through them in some way. Hopefully by writing in the third person, as a way of dissociation that will hopefully work as an automatic bridge to a shared understanding...

K was just an average kid post-911, no astounding childhood trauma to live through but as most young ladies dealt with her father's unemployment and the rippling effects of socioeconomic downgrades. Started mixing with the bad crowds but never too close. Mostly intimate gatherings with illicit drugs, which are now legal almost everywhere but not then and not at that age group.

She endured two subsequent losses at a pivotal time of her development, laced with a burgeoning chemical dependence. Around that time her sibling started having a lot of problems, as one of those losses was her father, any remaining illusion of parental control in that house vanished. In the wakes of such a traumatic event, the sibling coped more socially acceptably than she did. Though the law did not agree. When they were busted with marijuana they were ordered to go to drug rehab classes, for marijuana, of all things.

In those classes, K's sibling learned how to still get high and pass the piss tests. Robotrip.

The kids who now ruled her home would steal many boxes of CCC, which was easier to steal than alcohol - though they would steal that as well. Dextromethorphan was likely much more damaging to K's mental state than the marijuana use in early adulthood but much easier to overlook. K didn't trip as often as the kids in her house did, she tried to stay away as much as possible, even before the major losses. Well before the plague of degenerates hit. She felt responsible for it all. Isolated within herself.

When she first started hallucinating, it wasn't very often or very noticeable. The most prevalent events were documented in some other blog around the time. The power of recording goes further than the record itself, in-so-far as the recorder is still present to set the record straight.

However, memory isn't very accurate. The first voice she claims to have heard was a very powerful, chiefly British voice. It responded to her pleas of "why is this happening" while she was breaking down as a party raged in the rest of the house. The voice said "it's psychological warfare my dear" this did not help her sleep and though she can't remember exactly when this happened, she suspects that it likely led to a hospitalization - not her first nor her last but, typically, people don't handle not sleeping very well.

The first visual hallucinations were much more obscure and easier to pinpoint around when they happened. But we're going to set the timing aside for this post, we're going to focus on the hallucinations.

K was outside smoking a cigarette on the back porch. Zoning out into the woods, she saw a black and white flash in the back of her mind. She wasn't eating well, this was around the time she was stealing to eat, as the kids would eat everything in the house. She hadn't been sleeping well because all the parties and it's hard to sleep when you're hungry, with no real barring on which voices were real and which ones were just in her head.

When she saw those lights, nearly like a dot flashing black and white - she looked towards the source. Then she was locked in a gaze with a doe. A deer. A female deer.

Now, she has a propensity for science. It intrigued her greatly, it was a bit of a magical moment. Through the degradation of self; thought and action alike. Not only the mental but also the physical. Going through all kinds of chemical imbalances she triggered herself to deal with the totally unreal situation surrounding her. May she understand instinct? Is there some kind of mechanism in the brain that fires when someone or something notices us?

Seeing as how this wasn't in a sterile environment and it's impossible to imagine being able to replicate it in the slightest. Not only that but the walls of Jericho have fallen, survival is important. Above unlocking the guns she's been (somehow) keeping away from the hoards, what could she do in that moment with that information? Why, go crazy. And crazy she did go.

At a later time, likely that night, she was sitting on the stairs of the same porch. Close to the bottom. She felt something detach from the stairs and heard it scurry off. The leaves shuffled under the stairs and trailed off towards the ditch. Now, the timeline does little for her favor here again but she does want the reader to know that around that time one of her friends told her "don't investigate sounds" this was likely because she would work herself into the most unscrupulous positions trying to track down the source of sounds. Obviously, the man who told her this coupled those words of wisdom with some nonsense about fairies existing and being in force around that time of year.

She lost all her standard friends around that time but the void of socialization seemed to fill on its own. As tends to happen much more slowly and much less intensely with age, she experienced a grand shift in influence. In retrospect, it was much more similar to the revival of her aunts time, just different wordings. Instead of Christ and the Holy Spirit, much more defining and ultimate theories of the Self and a sort of Collective Unconscious. Miracles were instead dubbed Magick and ideas of psychic phenomena being plausible unveiled around her. Given her Christian familial ties, it was easy for her to place the blame on the materials she was reading.

These ideas brought a curse, you see, it's only logical! Questioning divinity in such a matter is only means to subject yourself to the whims of the divine. Nobody wants that. But yet the Pagans she surrounded herself around did little to bring her harm. They were a saving grace in those dark times, an epitome of the good in humanity. They didn't feed her delusions because she never truly opened her mouth to let them, however.

She Spent most her time arguing with how someone read the Tarot cards, then to just laugh about the fact they don't mean anything. She heard some old Pagan tell her about seeds of faith and how he wanted to give all atheists a hug. Even when she tried to conform to the Christian monopoly on faith, she stopped going to bible study after the separation of church and state argument. I must agree, however; just because a Muslim in your child's class can pray, doesn't mean every school in America should force Christian prayers on students, that's insane. INSANE!

This is a good example of influence. In and of itself, who we are becomes who we are around and vice versa. As much as K wishes she could worship God in any church she walks into, she's of good mind to tell us that the Baptists don't appreciate it when you say "peace be with you" during the morning greeting before service... She's not sure how the Episcopal' handle not being told "and also with you" in response but she's not of the mind to find out. As another repeat of Bible studies would be hazardous to her spiritual health.

The biggest obstacle in remaining spiritually healthy, is how unhealthy spirituality can be. When the megaphone for God becomes a person, it's subject to every variation people can provide.

Science isn't so fickle. It's not of the divine because the divine can only be experienced, not replicated. The deeply personal and unexplainable become mired by representations of how time passes. Who puts their little timestamp on the bible, passing on that understanding in their little sects. What was once a fringe belief becomes mainstream and unescapable, but no truer regardless. That's not how science works.

The triple C days of the flop house era were hallmarked by many big moments for K... Now let's talk about some of the robotrips K recalls.

The Robotrips of K

Now; as is becoming a theme in K's life, the timeline is very murky here. As you could expect with a drug experimenter, user or abuser. Without someone or something documenting or accompanying the person doing drugs. So she broke down the most common threads of her time with the drug.

There were trips that made her walk like a dinosaur. Wandering through the house on her tip toes, arms drawn in to look small... She'd protract two fingers and visualize herself as a dinosaur. Rawering. Pacing. For hours. Well, maybe not hours but what seemed like far too long.

K remembers a rather big CCC party at the house, she had to throw up and ran outside to do it - every kid filed out of the house to do the same. She had a favorite spot to occupy while tripping sometimes. It was an unmounted, blue cabinet. She'd sit up there and meow at people.

She states she was going insane on and off the drug, maybe that's what kept the kids from getting the guns? It keeps coming up for some reason, I don't think she fully understood or conceptualized what could happen if her sibling and his friends got into the safe but she did catch them once. She just remembers the shock on their faces and how they ceased their operation after getting caught. Certainly it takes more than that to make a hero but little did she know at the time, they were going down a really bad path when it came to the whole stealing thing. In-so-far as breaking into gas stations and this rich kid's house down the street. One of his friends was beaten by a gas station clerk with a golf club but still managed to get away. Despite being in the gripes of a serious mental health crisis K was still, at times, the voice of reason.

It's no surprise then how she's managed to come out better than most did from that house. In the end being forced to undertake mental health treatment did more to save her than harm her. Providing a teether to the normal. It was more a-kin to visiting a doctor for about a week than being locked up against her will. As you'd expect, she'd sign herself in.
Many of the kids from that time picked up serious, serious drug habits later on. But thanks to her mother's acceptance of the Science of mental illness, she was spared even a dalliance with any serious, life altering addiction (like heroin, meth or cocaine)

Though she's tried many mainstream approaches to hijacking the dopamine receptors in her brain, in an attempt to alleviate the hallucinations. She's come to the conclusion that the brain is much more complicated than it's given credit for when an illness such as hers is approached as it is. For example: When it comes to autism we've become more accepting with those who suffer from it, even going as far as to change how we diagnose the condition.

Enter the Continuum

I don't know how you got here but I hope you're glad you came. I'll get to the alien stuff soon fairies, very... well... fairly soon.