A Real Update!

Hello, all. It’s been quite a while since I wrote about what I’ve been up to, hasn’t it?

Well, the truth is, I was trying to distance myself from all of this. I’ve contemplated deleting the blog. I’ve been having nightmares. It’s been a bit of a struggle. BUT! I have come to decide that I am not going to delete the blog, because I feel its presence helps people too much to just selfishly throw it all away.

But that being said … there will be times when I will be absent from here. I obviously don’t update the way that I did when I began this blog (and, frankly, I avoid re-reading old entries at pretty much all cost), but I’d never just abandon it. I do fairly regularly keep up checks on it, so even if I’m not posting or responding to comments / emails right away, I’m still around, so don’t worry–and I will reply to everything eventually!

The reason I’ve been so removed from everything lately is that I’ve been rebuilding my life, and I’ve found when I focus too much on the memories of “being mental,” or when I think about WHY I take medication each night, it starts to cause me anxiety and make me doubt myself. I’d rather just pretend that I have no issues whatsoever. Personally, I’ve found that by not giving myself the excuse of ANYTHING that I can fall back on, I’m able to make much more progress. I don’t live my life by thinking I can’t do this or that because I’m “crazy” and it’s “too hard.” What I do is stay ever conscious of my stress levels, do little things here and there to stay balanced, and I think of myself as being like anyone else.

Of course, somewhere in the back of my mind, I do constantly worry about falling apart again, but I don’t let that fear overtake everything. I have had some small episodes over the summer that did end up affecting my progress some, but I walked away from them learning more about myself rather than gaining more fear that I might go totally crazy again.

Currently, I am taking a handful of classes again and have decided that I’m going to work towards a career in art therapy, which is exciting. I’ve also found some part time work that I started last week. I’ve never worked and gone to school before, so it’s a new experience, but one that I’m pretty happy with and am learning to handle well. Going back to work is a big step for me, since I’ve kept a fear of it ever since I had my breakdown in the midst of holding my last job, but there was no way to conquer that fear and anxiety except to jump in to everything again and just go with it. I absolutely LOVE the work I do now (and I’m being intentionally vague to keep some privacy) and I look forward to advancing in school and having a career / life that I’m really going to love. It’s very exciting because I’ve never had a very clear path to my life, and I’ve obviously had a lot of obstacles to overcome, which have planted many seeds of doubt that I’d ever HAVE a real life, so being where I am now makes me so, so happy.

I also recently ended the relationship I was in for good (I don’t think I mentioned much of this since we last split a few months ago, because it was so on and off and I didn’t want to confuse people). It took a lot for me to put my foot down, but I did, and after a few days of feeling miserable about it, I bounced back and now I feel absolutely fantastic. My ex had plenty of good qualities, but the bad ones greatly outweighed the good, and I don’t think he appreciated me enough. He upset me more than he made me feel wanted, and after a recent event that he failed to come through on, that was the last straw. Our relationship was extremely complicated and spanned across six years (off and on), but this past year, especially, was a major test of everything, and in the end, I was the only one putting any effort into any of it, and that’s fucked up. I need someone who will support me equally and make me feel wanted, and most importantly, respect me. I need stability and I need a commitment. But … I’m not very concerned with this subject right now. As with other negative things in my life recently, I’ve taken this all as a lesson about myself (I now have a clearer picture of who I am and what I want in a partner, and I know I can speak up when I’m being wronged) and I’m moving on. My therapist pointed out yesterday that I’ve progressed a whole lot since I’ve been on my own, and she’s right. I’m not overly dependent on others like I used to be, but I definitely do put things off more and use them as an excuse to not get things done than I do on my own, which is why, right now, I’m actually pretty happy to be on my own. It’s going to do me a lot of good to just focus on my own goals and build up my own life for a while.

As a last note, I’ve been adding some other blogs to my list that I think you should check out. There are two blogs kept by others who also deal with schizoaffective disorder: Coping and Hoping & Suicidal No More: Choosing to Live with Schizophrenia, and then the most recent addition to the Bipolar blog roll: Bipolar: Crazy Mermaid’s Blog. Check them out! They are also linked from the main page of my blog along the sidebar.

Well, I hope this was a more fulfilling update than I’ve done in a while. I really need to get back to studying now, since weekends give me the only real free time I get now, which I need to break up wisely between school work and leisure.

How to be an insensitive asshole and completely invalidate your argument

Since Monday, I’ve been receiving asinine comments from somebody who is hell bent on defending Jamie Foxx to death, for whatever reason. I would have had no problem discussing this issue had the comments even made sense from the start and hadn’t come in right away being pretty rude. When I still disagreed with the logic that the comment gave me, the next reply from this person was this:

What did he actually say? What were Foxx’s exact words? Because I don’t see how he could have said “I know what it is like to be a schizophrenic” or in so many words. I am begginning to think that you are just being what you are, a schizophrenic.

There was then further explanation in reply to someone else’s comment stating that because a symptom of schizophrenia is distorted thinking and perception of reality, apparently that means my brain doesn’t work at all and my opinion doesn’t matter because it’s “crazy.”

Oh, wait, except I’m not schizophrenic. There are more than enough clues to this all over this blog. Schizoaffective disorder ISN’T straight schizophrenia. It also has never affected my way of thinking in the way this person is implying (and it’s puzzling why this person so badly wants my positive opinion on Jamie Foxx if I’m so damn “crazy”).

So there’s that for the moment. Now I’ve gotta run to get to my class.

A REAL class. At a REAL college. Oh, shocking, I know.

OH, LYFE~

Man, screw my dreamwidth journal. I never update that one. I’m around livejournal a lot more, so seek me out there if you give a crap.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I updated here about what’s been going on in my life, so I figured I should write something up this morning.

I’ve been pretty busy. It’s nice, actually! I’m taking a math class at my college three days a week, and I’m doing really well. The last semester that I attended classes (last winter), I took a similar class with the same instructor and passed with a decent grade. I’ve been horrible at math and hated it forever, but the way these classes are structured works really well for me, and I’m finally understanding everything! Basically, each student works at his or her own pace using a computer program, although you’ve got to finish each lesson on time each week, so it’s self-paced but also … kind of not. Anyway, everyone works individually at a computer, and the professor is there to assist with questions. I think it’s working so well for me because, unlike lecture type classes, I’m allowed to figure problems out on my own, at my own pace, without the professor whizzing through it all on the board and losing me halfway through the formula. I actually kind of love math now, and it’s really helped me out to excel at something that I’ve failed at for so long, and to do it all mostly on my own!

I plan to take more courses in the fall; I just have to figure out which ones.

I met with my therapist yesterday, after about a month of delays in keeping our appointments, on both my end and hers, and things went really well. Over the weeks that I ended up not being able to meet with her, I forced myself to overcome my feelings of inadequecy and just DO stuff. I started to write down lists of things to do each day, and attempted to finish at least 70% each day. That system really worked for me, and I’ve somewhat slacked off on it lately, but haven’t given it up entirely. The way I tend to work is that every so often, I just have to mope around for a bit, until I get really sick of myself and find the motivation I need to get up and work towards changing things for the better.

My goals for this coming week, which I told my therapist, are to sort out some school business, and apply to at least five places for a job. There’s still a part of me that’s a bit freaked out at the prospect of handling school AND work (I’ve never done it before, and doing it post-crazy still concerns me a bit), but nevertheless, I’m mostly confident that I can handle it. I also have some side notes to all of that which I hope to accomplish as well (purchasing new “work” type clothes, searching for a good, used car to buy, updating my license, etc), but all those things shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Honestly, most of the time now, I barely think about my mental problems. I still tend to hallucinate mildly here and there, but it’s become so common that it doesn’t really register as being anything “wrong,” especially as I just ignore whatever I’m “seeing” and focus on what it is that I’m doing instead. I don’t feel uneasy about being out in public, driving, or generally doing anything “normal” anymore like I used to. I pretty much feel like I’m back to how I was prior to all this crap happening, only, I think, a bit happier and more confident.

I’ve mentioned this around to people here and there over the past week or so– I’ve noticed that when I think about my mental problems, I don’t personalize it like I would / have done with any emotional problems I’ve had / have. What I mean is, before my psychotic symptoms took over as what I mainly deal with, and everything was more focused on my emotions, I felt a lot shittier. It was easier to blame myself for a lot of things, especially since most of my problems were focused on self-destruction of some kind, and I kept wondering why I could never just snap out of it.

Since my breakdown last year, though, my issues have shifted to being more about psychotic symptoms and less about emotional ones, and I no longer place blame on myself for anything. It feels much more like a type of physical disorder to me, because, even if everything’s in my head, it still doesn’t feel like a part of me, if you understand. I mean, when someone intentionally harms themself in some way or feels depressed or whatever, it’s at a level where the person realizes he or she is doing it to him or herself and there’s that level of self-disgust about it all. When symptoms are less about you hurting yourself and more about them wanting to attack you, it’s no longer something you feel you can blame on yourself. Well, I realize some do, but that’s not what I do. I suppose I could easily allow myself to fall into thoughts like “I’m so fucked up,” but I just honestly don’t feel that way. I’m proving to myself that I can function fine and I’ve never felt ashamed about my diagnosis. Shit happens in life to everyone; you just gotta learn how to work around it.

Btw, apologies if I’ve not returned emails to some people. I haven’t forgotten, but I’ve just been so busy and sort of lost track of things. Always feel free to email me again if I don’t reply for a while, cos sometimes I do need a bit of a nudge. Also, I’ve changed my email address (see the “Contact Me” page) so that I can better keep track of emails coming from this blog. If you’ve got my old address, that’s fine to continue using, but it would be more helpful to me if the new address were used instead. Thanks!

In conclusion, here’s Hugh Laurie in a bumper car:

This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time blah blah blah

I’m glad to be meeting with my therapist again, but in doing so, I’m also having to confront a lot of hard work. Well, hard but simple work, really. I need to organize my life, take more responsibility. FUNCTION, basically.

I laughed a bit during my last session and said, “After all I’ve been through, just living a normal life is the hardest, scariest thing to me. That doesn’t even seem logical.”

In order to fully explain why I’m having such a problem with this, I need to divulge a bit into a backstory. Although before I do, I need to make some things clear. It’s not my intention to drag members of my family through the mud here. Some of them read this blog and overall they’ve mostly been supportive of it. I love my family and I’m not here to slam anyone or reveal every tiny detail about my relationship with all of them. But my relationship with my mother is a topic that I cannot avoid for long when speaking about my mental health issues. Although, be that as it may, I only wish to mention that which is appropriate to reveal in regards to my current issues. I have no interest in bringing out every skeleton in the closet and putting them all on public display. For all her faults, my mother is still my mother, and she still supports me in a lot of ways, even if our relationship is usually fairly turbulent.

Now, disclaimer aside, I can begin.

My parents divorced when I was five years old, and my mom retained custody of my brother and I. At some point, she decided that we were having a hard time dealing with the divorce (keep in mind, I was five and my brother was three), so she put us through therapy. Her reasoning wasn’t because we were showing any signs of distress in response to the situation, but rather that we weren’t; she thought our indifference and happiness was a sign of hidden pain and sorrow. Essentially, she was projecting her own emotions onto us.

My brother somehow eventually weaseled his way out of continuing therapy (and meds) years before I did. I continued on with it all until I was about seventeen. I grew up thinking that everyone lived this way, at least the going to therapy bit. I realized pretty early on that not everyone took medication. Some meds I had to take throughout the day, and when friends would ask what they were for, I’d lie and say I was sick. I didn’t really know what to say besides that because I didn’t actually know why I was taking them myself.

The explanation I’ve found to explain a lot of my mother’s behavior is this: everyone probably knows of Münchausen syndrome (faking illness for attention) and the “by proxy” type (inducing sickness in someone else to receive attention), but both of those tend to conjure up images of physical sickness only. Well, while it’s probably rare, there is a side to this disorder that deals with garnering attention through mental illness as well.

My mom always liked to talk about my supposed mental health issues to everyone in order to show off what a great job she was doing coping with it all, and also to receive loads of sympathy from people. Over the years, I was diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety, and then back and forth with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In all actuality, I felt there was nothing wrong with me, but during my early years, I figured I must be wrong, since I had so many adults saying otherwise, especially my own parent. Then, around age twelve, I hit a brick wall, and all the symptoms I’d been told forever that I had but really didn’t started to actually become a reality. I became depressed and it all sort of spiraled downward more and more all throughout my teens. By the time I received the diagnosis of bipolar disorder when I was in my mid teens, I believed it.

Anyway, the point of revealing all of that was to illustrate why so called “normal” living is still pretty foreign to me. I grew up being told by professionals (and my mom) that I was totally nuts. There was never really any sort of structure for me growing up. I went to school and all that, but never felt I really belonged there. I felt it was all just a giant façade and I was just killing time until I’d inevitably be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of my life. I never truly planned my life because I didn’t think I’d ever get one. I expected to be dead before I was sixteen.

Possibly due to that belief, things really started going to shit when I was around that age. I put myself in the hospital for the first time then, and it inadvertently started a trend of “escape responsibility by having a breakdown.” I’ve mentioned before that my mom tends to do a lot of things for me. That, coupled with my belief that on some level I was crazy as fuck, led to a thought process that I couldn’t do anything right no matter what, so why even bother trying anymore? I’d also been groomed practically from birth to believe that the only way to get any REAL attention was through some kind of crisis.

Essentially, for the past twelve years, I’ve accomplished very little due to the fact that I give up on everything constantly. Almost everything I’ve done during that time frame ends with “and then I had a breakdown.” I seem to be able to function all right for a few months at the most, and then I inevitably crumble and go into hiding for X amount of time until I start a new cycle of the same shit.

The funny part (in a depressing way) is that I felt I was finally overcoming all of this during the job I had prior to my breakdown last January. Then, of course, that also ended with “and then I had a breakdown.” Although that breakdown was completely different than my usual anxiety driven, self-mutilating, too-depressed-to-do-anything types of the past. For the first time in my life, I was totally blindsided by my mental problems. I literally woke up one day and lost my mind. There wasn’t much of a precursor to it.

Anyway, because of my constant pattern, the thought of actually functioning well for a long period of time is pretty terrifying to me because, well, I’ve never really done it. On top of that, I now have the constant fear in the back of my mind that I won’t be able to handle things again and I’ll wake up on a new day and go through another prolonged psychotic episode. I try to rationalize it all by reminding myself that I seem to be able to function without problem while on my meds, and therapy helps in some way as well, so I really should be just fine. But the only real way to calm my fears is to just get back out there and DO IT. And I’m damn well going to–even though part of me would really rather not, and just now even the thought of it is making me want to throw up–because I know I’m capable of overcoming my problems; I know I’m capable of not being defined by my illness. I know I have practically my whole life of feeling that the only way I could get attention was through being fucked up working against me, but my outlook has already changed dramatically in the past five years or so, and I know I really can only keep going forward, even if it happens at a pace that’s slower than I’d like. There is no quick fix for anything in life; it’s all up to how much hard work you put into it.

It’s amusing that the way most people stumble upon this blog is through searching the Nine Inch Nails’ lyric I believe I can see the future / cos I repeat the same routine. That may have been the truth for me in the past, but I don’t want it to be the truth for me forever.

“Sort your fucking life out, mate!”

I’m scared.

There, I said wrote it.

There’s that saying that the first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one. I’m told that frequently. I suppose it’s true, but what people fail to mention is that huge gap between admitting something’s wrong and actually taking steps to fix it.

I want to get my life back together. I want to function properly. I want independence.

Yet I keep stalling.

Ever since my therapy session this past weekend, I’ve just felt guilty. I’ve realized that I live my life more through other people than I do for myself. It’s difficult for me to find my own motivation unless I’m working with another person. I manage my time better if I feel someone else is expecting something of me than I do when I’m the only person I have to answer to. I procrastinate like a motherfucker. Even if it’s doing something that will only serve to improve my life, I can still find an excuse why it would be better to put it off until tomorrow.

To go with the Freudian cliché, I think most of these feelings stem from my relationship with my mother. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, she babies me constantly. I had a pretty violent relationship with her as a kid, and while it’s now not the same as it was then (thank God), she still seems to exert this desire to control everything, especially anything to do with me. She’ll tell me that I need to learn responsibility, yet she takes all responsibility away from me. If I’m ever doing anything in front of her (setting up the coffee machine, washing dishes, etc.) she’ll inevitably find something I’m doing “wrong” and point it out to me. She tends to tell me to take care of my own stuff, but then she’ll do things like pick up dirty plates and cups and wash all the dishes anyway. She used to clean my room if I were out of the house somewhere for a few hours, and she still sometimes does. If I ever tell her to cut it out and leave my things for me to handle, she’ll say that I never do anything I say I’ll do and then … usually does it for me again before I have a chance to do it myself.

She denies ever acting like this if the subject is brought up among other people, therapists especially. She’s been told that by doing what she does, she’s ill-equipping me of skills I need to function as an adult, and constantly giving me the message that nothing I ever do myself is good enough.

I’m not saying this is all her fault. She’s definitely a reason for my anxiety, but I’m entirely able to make my own choices in my life. Right now, it’s me who needs to fix things. My mom’s never going to change. But I can change.

So why is it so goddamn motherfucking hard to do?!

I told my therapist that I would get my shit together this week. I’m supposed to start going back to the gym, finish up the paperwork needed to do volunteer work there, and generally doing stuff instead of hiding from the world all the time. And this is all stuff I want to do! But over the past few days, I’ve realized that on some level, I’m petrified of responsibility.

For the past ten years, I haven’t had a very good record of finishing anything, mostly due to issues with my mental health and/or my self-esteem in general. Most of it had to do with bouts of depression when I’d give up whatever I’d been working on and just quit. I dropped out of high school at the advice of a therapist after my first hospitalization. I’ve been working on college off and on for quite a while. Basically, I have nothing I feel that I’ve really accomplished, and it builds up over time and makes the whole “giving up” thing seem like it’s the only option I have for everything. Pile on top of that my fear of going crazy again and you’ve got yourself  a party.

What a bunch of bullshit.

I’ve become more determined than ever to prove my own worth to myself ever since I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder last year. To myself and those around me, it felt like the real underlying problem through the years had FINALLY been found out and could be treated so that I could function well again and pick up the pieces of my life. It’s just that the whole “bouncing back” thing is taking longer than I, and possibly others, expected. I guess if you look back at my pattern of giving up, though, a decade compared to a year is pretty off-balance.  I don’t want to use that as an excuse for why I can’t get my shit together though because it’s pathetic.

I really just have to suck it up and get to work. I know that if I take that first step in the right direction, everything will fall into place and become easy. I just need to stop being afraid of success … and I wish I knew how to do that. I know I’m capable of setting goals for myself and doing things on my own without anyone else’s support, because I used that formula many times in order to be self-destructive. I just have to re-wire that thought process to work towards something good instead. I need to somehow push the negative voices (sometimes “real” voices [to me], sometimes an inner voice like everyone has) away and learn to ignore them the way I ignore the rest of my symptoms that interfere with daily life.

The way this is being written makes me sound much more optimistic than how I actually feel or what’s going on in my head right now. I keep making excuses the more I write here and listing reasons why I’m a bad, crazy person who’s never going to sort her life out. This fucking blows.

Supplemental blog

Here is my other public blog that I mentioned in my post earlier: http://richey.dreamwidth.org/

I created a livejournal feed as well.

This pretty much goes without saying, but still: you absolutely do not need to read the dreamwidth journal if you don’t want to.

They took your life apart and called your failures art

I changed the layout here last night because the other one was too dark. I don’t want to give off the impression of doom and gloom all the time, especially since that’s not how I feel or view life. This layout isn’t 100% how I’d like it to look, either, but oh well.

I don’t know who will care or not (feedback would be greatly appreciated!), but I’ve started planning on keeping another public blog alongside this one. The difference between the two is that the other blog will be about life in general, not just mental illness. I thought it would help give anyone interested a better idea of who I am beyond just this one subject. I’d thought of just keeping everything in this one journal, but I decided that doing that would sort of defeat the purpose of why I created this blog in the first place. I’d like people to know more than one side of me, but I also want emphasis placed on my disorder (and mental illness in general) to bring greater insight and understanding to it all.

Anyway, I’ll give a link once I’ve got that journal more set up.

I’ve also decided to re-join Twitter and see how that goes. My page is here if anyone wishes to follow me.

Getting down to business now, I guess. I had a session with my therapist this weekend. I hadn’t seen her in months due to money issues and all the drama with my brother’s health. It was nice to finally talk to her again, although it also reminded me of how much work I have to do still. I basically have no sense of myself when it comes to certain things, especially anything involving food. She asked me what I thought would make a healthy dinner, and I honestly couldn’t answer.

In order for this to make sense to anyone, I should explain that my mom babies the hell out of me. Not in a good way though, really. What I mean is that she tends to do everything for me before I get a chance to do it myself, thus rendering me pretty useless when it comes to learning skills for myself (like cooking).  No matter how many times I try to get her to stop and allow me to do things on my own, she never listens. It’s pretty infuriating.

Anyway, because of all that, it’s difficult for me to grasp certain aspects of being an independent adult, and my therapist is working with me in order to overcome these obstacles. Things like understanding the various aspects of money, bills, cooking. Basic stuff. She’d like it if I could be sent shopping for groceries and start preparing meals on my own. She also wants me to have a healthier understanding of food in general. I understand what’s healthy or not healthy, but my judgment of portions and how to mix things together is really skewed. Like, I function either on the level of “eat whatever whenever I feel like it” or  the “eat barely anything / obsess over every calorie” level. There’s really no in between area for me. It seems really ridiculous, even to me, but when asked what I thought a healthy meal would be, I couldn’t think of a damn thing. Well, that’s a bit of a lie. I could think of things like an apple or yogurt, but when it came to mixing things together to create an actual meal, I went blank.

I’m supposed to cut out pictures of “healthy” food and bring them to my next session this coming weekend. I’m not gonna lie, it is pretty embarrassing, but if activities like this will help me better understand this type of stuff then I’ll do whatever it takes. I mean, it’s embarrassing to not understand this stuff in the first place!

I am actually really hungry right now, and writing this isn’t making it any better, haha. I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to mention here today, so I’m going to stop here and go find something to eat.

Jamie Foxx is a flaming douchebag

Oh, man, I’m going to swear up a storm in this post.

For those of you who somehow haven’t yet heard of the film The Soloist, here’s a summary yanked from MTV.com:

Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former violin prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) is… a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles’ Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin. The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater is respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on stage with a symphony orchestra? Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own.

“[...] it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own.”

HAHA. SERIOUSLY? All right, so I’m nitpicking the summary only here, but come on. What the hell is this bullshit. It might as well say some crap like, “The quirky adventures of a homeless, schizophrenic musician and his helpful journalist pal as they work together to make the magician’s dreams come true. Join them as they travel through the zany inner world of mental illness and take from it lessons of compassion, love, and purple rainbow kitty cereal cloud. Music by Hilary Duff.”

Everyone reading this, go out and pick yourself up a schizophrenic! We’re like puppies! We’ll improve your life!

I’m digressing, though. I’m sure I’m far from done bitching about this film in this blog, but I’ll save that for another time, as my main issue at the moment is with Jamie Foxx.

From MTV News:

Oscar-winning actor, singer, comedian and radio-show host Jamie Foxx found it hard to disconnect from his role as a homeless schizophrenic in the new movie “The Soloist.” The part was so emotionally taxing that Foxx started therapy to help him cope with the role and keep himself separate from the character.

“It was something that I enjoyed, but it shredded me. I went to places that I never thought I would ever go,” he said, according to Bossip. “I just remember being in my bathroom broke down, talking to my manager, like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish this.’ ”

For the movie, in which he co-stars with Robert Downey Jr., Foxx found that even when he wasn’t on set, he was still consumed by the role of Nathanial Ayers, a Juilliard-trained musician who suffers from schizophrenia and wound up living on the streets of Los Angeles. “You had to lose your mind every day you’re on set, and sometimes you didn’t have enough time to get your mind back before the weekend.”

Wait, wait. Back the fuck up. Let’s take baby steps through this, shall we?

01. He’s pretending to be a schizophrenic.

This is where the most emphasis needs to be placed, obviously. Especially to Jamie Foxx himself. So allow me to drill this point home:

He’s pretending to be a schizophrenic.
He’s pretending to be a schizophrenic.
He’s pretending to be a schizophrenic.

We’re clear on that now, right? Okay, moving on then.

02. Pretending to be a schizophrenic apparently made him suffer some kind of breakdown and seek therapy.

LOL

I suppose it’s flattering in some roundabout way to find out that what I deal with daily sent some jackass actor off crying and seeking therapy. But, still, LOL. Just. fucking. L-O-L.

Continuing on.

Everyone knows what sadness feels like, so I could KIND OF see this logic working if he were portraying someone with an emotional disorder like depression or maybe even bipolar disorder. Not everyone has those illnesses, but one is able to empathize to an extent with how those really suffering might feel because they deal with pretty universal emotions (for the most part) (p.s. I hope you understand my point. I’m not trying to offend anyone suffering from depression or bipolar disorder!)

There is no way in hell that anyone can imagine what schizophrenia is like and have it be anywhere near what the reality is like. Unless you suffer from it yourself, you have no idea. “Pretending” to be schizophrenic means that you still have a grip entirely on what’s real or not. No matter how much you want to say you got caught up in your stupid fantasy world, it’s a ton of crap. It’s comparable to an actor who portrays someone dying of AIDS making a statement that he totally understands that world after the performance he gave. No, you don’t, you dumbass motherfucker, because YOU’RE NOT REALLY DYING OF AIDS.

Goddamn.

I don’t think I can say any more on this matter tonight that isn’t just a string of obscenities, so I’ll leave you this with this article by avclub.com which nailed a lot of points (with far less swearing). Some of the comments also help restore my faith in humanity, especially the thread started by “wammer”:

I’m tired of actors trying to convince the wider world that their job is so difficult. “Boo hoo, I have to sit in a trailer all day and then pretend that I’m crazy for a few minutes.” The constant need for ego gratification really annoys the crap out of me.

And first reply, from “Werdsmiff”:

I don’t mind that they take their job seriously (when they can walk the walk, of course), but it is a little shabby to compare your experience of acting a role to someone who has to live with real mental health problems.

THANK YOU.

Btw, I totally love Robert Downey Jr., so it sucks that he’s wrapped up in something that I knew from the start would make me spew massive amounts of vitriol. At least he’s not the one spouting off stupid shit [that I know about, anyway]. Don’t fuck me over too, RDJ

Cancer blog

This post serves as an addendum to my post a few weeks ago informing you all of my brother’s current battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I just found out that he has started his own blog to document his experiences:

http://aseasoninhell.tumblr.com/

Check it out and pass it around to those who might find it helpful.

The Most Beautiful Suicide

A friend informed me about this photograph / story the other day, and it seemed like something readers of this blog might be interested in (it definitely interested me). I’m not condoning suicide at all, just merely passing on a story.

The following text is borrowed from this site.

On May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death.

The photo ran a couple of weeks later in Life magazine accompanied by the following caption:

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. ‘He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,’ … Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s death Wiles got this picture of death’s violence and its composure.

From McHale’s NY Times obituary, Empire State Ends Life of Girl, 20:

At 10:40 A. M., Patrolman John Morrissey of Traffic C, directing traffic at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a swirling white scarf floating down from the upper floors of the Empire State. A moment later he heard a crash that sounded like an explosion. He saw a crowd converge in Thirty-third Street.

Two hundred feet west of Fifth Avenue, Miss McHale’s body landed atop the car. The impact stove in the metal roof and shattered the car’s windows. The driver was in a near-by drug store, thereby escaping death or serious injury.

On the observation deck, Detective Frank Murray of the West Thirtieth Street station, found Miss McHale’s gray cloth coat, her pocketbook with several dollars and the note, and a make-up kit filled with family pictures.

The serenity of McHale’s body amidst the crumpled wreckage it caused is astounding. Years later, Andy Warhol appropriated Wiles’ photography for a print called Suicide (Fallen Body).