Sanity's Requiem

I've started having the nightmares again. The dreams where I lose myself, and my sanity, and all I can do is cry and try to hide cause I'm so broken and I don't want to be. I used to have those dreams a lot in the past, when I was really sick, and even after all these years they still scare the crap outta me. Nothing scares me more than the possibility of going insane. The fibromyalgia doesn't scare me - it just makes me tired and frustrated - the thought of breaking something doesn't scare me - it's just an unpleasant thought - and the thought of getting a serious physical disease like cancer or whatever doesn't scare me either - if it happens, it happens, and I'll deal with it if it ever comes to that. But the thought of going insane scares me so much that I can't even begin to describe it.

I've been to that point where I really should've been locked up in a padded room, cause I saw things that weren't there and heard voices in my head, and I can't even count how many times I've been curled up in a corner, crying hysterically while begging for someone or something to come save me, or just end my life. I've felt lost in famailiar places cause my brain told me I hadn't been there before, I've had blackouts because other personalities took over and made me do things I never thought I'd do, I've heard the ground beneath me cry out in a horrible cry that nearly broke me, and I've looked into a mirror and what looked back wasn't me. I know what it's like to be in that spot. And I never, ever, ever want to end up there again. I'd rather die, cause even death is less scary than losing my sanity.

You don't know what it's like, unless you've been there yourself. It can't be described in a way you'll understand, and you really can't imagine what it's like. You can watch movies with crazy people, and you can laugh at them, or feel sorry for them, or find them fascinating and/or cool, but you can never, in a million years, understand what it's like to be them. Insanity is not something fun that you can watch from afar. It breaks you, it breaks your life, and it breaks those around you that care about you and that have to watch you fall apart without being able to do anything about it. Just thinking about it makes me tear up, and even though I might joke about it today - cause joking is how I deal with bad shit - it's still the scariest fucking thing I've ever experienced.

Looking back, I find it amazing how I managed to survive it all. I feel so horribly bad for the people that got caught up in it, trying to help, and how my insanity broke them alongside me. I know it's not my fault, cause I had no control over it, no say in things, but I still feel bad, and I'm sorry. And I swear, if I ever end up in that place again, I'll just disappear from this world instead of letting anyone come close enough to get caught up in it. It sounds so horribly dramatic, but I'm just being honest. Going insane is so horrible I can't even put it into words, and knowing that you're breaking your loved ones is even worse.

Never again.

I managed to survive it, amazingly enough, and I wish I could say that it was all thanks to the support from my loved ones, and from the help I got from many psychiatrists I saw, but that's not what saved me. That's not what kept me going through that hell, holding me up so I wouldn't drown in my own sanity and be lost for good. That's not what pulled me away from that edge every single time I was ready to end it, and gave me a reason to keep fighting. I owe it all to my world, strange as it may sound. But I've already said that about a gazillion times now, how my world saved my life, so I'm not gonna go in on it right now. I just want to say that I'm grateful, and that I'll never let go of that world of mine, cause it's as much a part of me as I am of it, and without it I'd fall apart, and die.

But, nightmares. That's what I started to talk about. I used to have a lot of nightmares about going insane, and they've come back. I guess it's just a really good sign that I'm scared, despite how I pretend not to be. I've had a couple of episodes that worry me, where I've heard or seen things that weren't there, and suddenly feeling lost when in familiar places, and, the worst one yet, suddenly having someone else take over my mind without my approval. I mean, I've already come to terms with the fact that I have a multiple personality disorder (or dissociative disorder, as it has been renamed now), and I've learned to live with it and even take advantage of it it, and I've come to the point where me and my other halves have an agreement on how we run things. I can borrow the strength I need from them whenever I need it, without them taking over completely, and we all feel satisfied with this arrangement. So when they suddenly start taking control without my say-so, and I start feeling others whom aren't even part of this little group of me, then I get worried.

It's a defence mechanism, that I've come to understand. That's why people develop alternate personalities - to escape something that scares or threatens them, leaving someone else in charge instead of dealing with it. An unpleasant situation arises, and you run away into your own mind, letting another personality take over and handle it, cause you yourself just aren't strong enough, or you're just too scared. The perfect defence, and I get it. And I get how I ended up creating this defence for myself during my early childhood, and how escape seemed like the only way to survive. I get why I needed this in the past, and why I felt like I had to protect myself. But why now?

Yes, I'm struggling these days. I'm fighting my way through a particularily tough dungeon, and it's taking its toll on me. But it's not as bad as anything I've ever had to deal with in the past. I'm struggling, but I'm managing, so I don't need that defence. I don't need that escape, cause I'm strong enough to deal with it myself. So why? And what's causing my head to act up, having me see and hear things that aren't real?

I have no idea.

But I'm more worried than I'd like to admit. Although, no, I don't think I'll fall back to where I was, cause I have things in my life now that I didn't have back then, and I found something, or someone, inside me that gives me a strength I never had before, so I won't be broken that easily. That, and I killed the main reason for why I was in such a bad place. So no, I won't fall back there. But I'm still worried, cause there are quite a lot of places between back there and where I am now that I can fall back into. And if my dreams are any indication, then I'm close to tripping right now, and falling over. An even clearer sign that things aren't as they should are certain other dreams and thoughts that has resurfaced.

I used to have a safety blanket. Or, rather, someone I'd turn to when things got bad, though I don't really know why. He's just... My go-to place. And he's been that most of my life.

I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, and right now I can't be bothered going through old blog entries to check, but I've dreamt about the same guy all my life. I have no idea who he is, and in every dream he looks and acts different, and the events in the dreams are different, but I always know it's him, cause I have the same feeling every time. It's just one of those things you know when you're dreaming. But the weird thing about him is that he has a couple of different versions of him that repeat themselves, as in; I dream about them several times, and it's almost become as if these different versions are different people, yet at the same time they're him. It's hard to explain, and it could come from my other personalities just seeing him in different ways, but either way I've chosen to see theses versions as seperate people, that I've given seperate names.

And one of these versions used to be my safety blanket back when I was really sick. Or, rather, back when I was really insane. I only dreamt of that version during those days, and I became somewhat obsessed with everything that reminded me of him. I'd seek out various things that became symbols of him, and listened to music that reminded me of him - the piano in particular became pretty important, cause he used to play for me in my dreams. I know what he looks like, what he sounds like, and how he acts and how he dresses - I see it as clear as day, due to having dreamt so much of him - and it feels like I know him. And I turned to him when things got really rough, and I cried for him whenever I begged for someone to come save me, or end me. I even wrote a story about him, and about myself and how I was doing back then, and it's still my favourite thing of everything I've ever written. It's a short story, called Magdalena, and you can read it here if you want.

And last night I dreamt about him again. I've gone years without dreaming of him - or, well, that version of him - and I'd more or less put him behind me, not really giving him much thought. That is, until now, where he suddenly showed up in a dream again. Not him though, cause I never saw him or talked to him, but he was mentioned. I was with an ex of mine, and we were talking or something, and suddenly she got a call from him, and she just screamed his name, as if something bad had happened to him, and then she took off, leaving me falling into pieces. Just his name and the thought that he was in danger made me fall apart, and then the dream turned into a nightmare where I lost myself and became someone else.

And then I dreamt about the one I killed almost three years ago - the one inside my mind that controlled me. The main reason for why I was so sick, that I got rid of. In the nightmare, I suddenly remembered her, and I got so horribly scared, and somehow I knew she was the cause of everything bad in that dream. It was odd, and terrifying, and I just know that it's my subconscious trying to tell me something. I just don't get what.

Things are odd inside my head these days.

But I'm coping, I think. As I've mentioned in an earlier entry, I try to keep myself busy with various things, distracting my mind from what is going on so that it won't get worse. I mainly focused on my paperwork, and some work on the computer, but the computer work was limited because my computer still haven't been moved into the bedroom and the desk there. Aaaand, now I have to wait even longer before I can move it, because my screen decided to randomly die the other day. Got the computer hooked up to my TV right now, which is horrible. The screen is too big, giving me too much to try and focus on, and it hurts my eyes, my neck, and my head. And my sitting position hurts my body. So, I barely even use the computer these days because of this. Just this entry has taken me forever to write, cause I keep having to take breaks because of the pain. I can't afford a new screen, so I'm stuck like this for now.

Luckily, I got Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U - on the same day my screen broke, no less - so I keep myself busy playing that, cause it's a pretty great distraction for my head. It's a brilliant game, well worth the wait and the money, and I'm totally in love with it. And the fact that it's keeping me safe from what's going on in my mind makes me love it even more.

Hopefully, I'll be able to save up money in the meantime so I can buy a new screen and move my computer to the desk so I can get back to work again, and, most importantly, so I can get back into RPing again, cause that is my favourite kind of distraction. I just gotta hang in there, and keep fighting, and hopefully it'll make it out of this and back to that good place I know I can be in.

Dungeon fighting

I don't usually brag about my doctors. In fact, quite the opposite; I complain about them. These past years have of trying to deal with the fibromyalgia and getting the diagnose, and getting help for it, have been a downright nightmare. It wasn't until I literally broke down and cried my eyes out in front of the doctor I had a couple of years ago that she finally decided to get off her ass and do something, and I got sent to the hospital where I was diagnosed with the fibromyalgia. But even though I got the diagnose, I still didn't get any of the help I needed. I had to change the doctor's office twice before I finally got some help.

My current doctor's office have been absolutely amazing, and I am so immensely grateful for their help and their amazing service. My actual doctor is away on a leave, so I haven't even met her, and from what I've been told she won't be back until next year, so the doctors I've seen so far have all been temporary substitutes. But despite that, they've all been absolutely amazing. They took my pain serious, showed actual concern for my health - both physical and psychological - and took steps to help me. I got put on a proper medication for the fibromyalgia, and we put together a plan that we're following, and insisted on having me come in every other week just so they could make sure I was doing okay. They've really made me feel like I'm being taken care of.

I had an appointment last week, but that morning I got a call from the doctor I was going to see, saying that the appointment had to be canceled because she was at home with a sick child. Which is totally fair, and I expected her to just give me a new appointment and that was that. But, what she did was that she took the entire appointment over the phone instead, and she asked me about how I was doing and how the medication was working for me, and if there was anything - anything at all - that I felt like I needed to talk about. And then she asked if I wanted to keep coming in every other week, or if I felt like I'd be okay with just coming in once a month instead (which I'm totally okay with), and then she set up a new appointment for me and wrote up a new prescription for meds since I was running out.

When I hung up, I couldn't help but smile. My appointment was canceled, and yet it didn't feel like it at all. I honestly felt like I had the appointment, even though it was over the phone, and I really do feel like I'm being taken care of. And compared to all the doctors I've had so far, in various other doctor's offices, it's just beyond amazing. And I definitely need it.


So, how am I doing?

Well, I'm surviving. I'm pretty good at that, I'd say, all things considered. But I'm really tired, and I'm mentally drained, and it's eating away at my mood. I do get the sleep I need, luckily, so physically I'm doing rather well, and the pain I'm dealing with is very little compared to what I used to deal with. But mentally, I'm completely exhausted now, and it's making me very drowsy and down. It's hard to function properly, which is annoying, cause I really need to keep it together so I can finish all the work on the apartment. I want to be done before winter sets in, so I don't have to deal with working on the apartment on top of the cold and the winter depression that I'll be dealing with. I know myself pretty well, and I know that autumn and the beginning of winter is always the worst part of the year for me. It's a full on fight every year just to make it through it alive.

Right now I'm in a really nasty place, cause it's not really a place at all. I'm between things, in some kind of stand-still, where I'm neither here nor there, and it's frustrating. To be honest, I'd rather just fall apart, cause at least then I can pick myself up again and glue myself back together, and I'll be moving in a direction - any direction. But I'm not moving at all right now. I'm standing still, between two steps, and it's driving me mad. I hate standing still.
 I think most of that is to be blamed on the apartment, cause my work on it have been rather still-standing this entire year, and I've gotten to a point where I just can't take it anymore. I'm tired of living in chaos and in boxes, cause that's how I've been living for almost two years now, and I'm at the end of my limits.

So, what am I doing about it all?

Taking it one day at a time. That's really all you can do when you've got fibromyalgia, cause it constantly gets in the way of whatever plans you've made. So, yeah, one day at a time. I try to make an effort daily to get things done, either in the apartment or on my project, so that I'm slowly forcing myself to move forward instead of standing still. It demands a lot of me, both mentally and physically, and I have to be careful not to push myself too hard or I'll just end up crashing completely. But I think it's somewhat working. My bad days and my good days are pretty equal in amount now, which is definitely an improvement, and absolutely something I can live with.

I take it one day at a time, and I try to focus on small things that keeps my mind busy, and that's how I'm slowly moving forward these days. Little by little, I'm gonna conquer this dungeon I'm in, and make it to that final boss. And when I do; I'mma kick its ass and gather a buttload of EXP to help me level up.

I've made it through every other dungeon so far, so I'm sure as hell not gonna let this one take me out.

The impact a character makes

I don't really have any updates regarding the things I addressed in my previous entry, cause I'm more or less in the same place. But I got my medicine dose doubled, as I mentioned, and that really helped a lot with the pain, and with helping me sleep, so I'm doing slightly better health-wise. And, of course, that naturally helps a lot on my mood. I'm still standing, even though I'm still deep within that dark dungeon of mine.

But that's not what I want to talk about in this entry.
Today I want to take a moment to talk about my darling companions, and how they've affected my life in such an astounding way.
If you are unfamiliar with my world and my companions, you should read up on an older blog entry of mine where I've tried explaining a little bit about it - My world

As I've already mentioned, my world and my characters (I prefer to refer to them as my companions) they are everything to me. I wouldn't even be alive if it wasn't for them, cause some of them have literally saved my life when I've been on the verge of ending it - and that has happened more than once. I owe them my life, and more. They've always been there for me. When life got hard, and everything was just horrible, I could turn to them and they'd protect me. They'd help me take my mind off the bad things happening in and around me, and just focus on something good instead. It was my escape - and my salvation.

I love my world. I've always loved it, and I know I'll never stop loving it. But my darling companions are so much more to me than all of those worlds within worlds all put together. Every single one of them has made an impact on me, and has brought something to my life that I either wanted or needed, or both. But a small handful of them have done so much more for me. They've saved my life, as I've alread said, and they brought new ways of thinking, and a new way of seeing things. By seeing things from their point of view, and by listening to them and their stories, I've learned new things about my world, my companions, the actual real world I live in, and myself. Their influence have helped me shape myself, and draw a proper map of who I am. I dare say that I know myself better than most people, purely because they've helped me see myself in ways I never thought was possible.

And then there are those random strangers that stumble into my life and completely change things. A while back I got a new addition to my Crew of Crazies - as I like to call my companions - and at the time I didn't think much of him. I was just playing around on a site called tektek where you can create so-called "dream avatars" for one of the online forums I'm a member of - GaiaOnline - and without really thinking I put together this random tektek of some random guy. And I stared at this tek for a long, long time, wondering what the eff I had just put together, and why, when I realized that he was just a new companion.
At that time, I had just started on a new RP with a good friend of mine (she's also my favourite RP partner), following a plotline we've been working on for about 8 years now, and I figured I'd just throw this newbie into that and see where that took me.

Wow. I had no idea that would leave such a massive impact on me as it did. This new companion - named Noct - really kicked up a storm, in a lot of ways. One thing is that he certainly made an impact on the other people in the RP, but another is how he got to me the way that he did. He challenged me, in a way I've never been challenged before, and it made me step very far outside of my general comfort zones, and it changed me. It changed my view of certain things, which has, in turn, helped me grow immensely.

Noct likes pushing the people around him. He always pushes everyone, and he often goes too far and crosses too many lines. He has gathered quite a lot of enemies of the years because of that. And it's all on purpose. As he says; You'll never grow and evolve as a person if you constantly stay in the same place, hiding within your comfort zones. You have to push yourself to get somewhere, and go beyond your own limits, cause only then you'll reach new heights that can fundamentally change who you are as a person, in a good way. But people rarely push themselves, so he does it for them. It doesn't always go well, of course, but most of the time it does.

He pushed me. He challenged me, my viewpoint, my thoughts and ideas, and he pushed me. I can see him standing there, tall and blue, with that stupid grin on his face and the playful spark in his eyes, daring me to go beyond my own limits, and before I even got as far as to take a leap off that edge, he came and just pushed me.

The biggest impact he made on me, personally, was the way I see my own sexuality. For those who know me, you know that it's been a horrible issue for me my entire life, cause I can never seem to settle down on a proper label that I feel comfortable with. I've gone from straight to bisexual, to lesbian, to bisexual again, to pansexual, to lesbian again, and then panromantic homosexual - or Wabbly, as I called it at one point - and I just keep swinging around without finding a place to settle down.

And then Noct appeared.

His reaction to sexuality caught me off guard, and it made me re-think some things. It was a specific scene that I had imagined (it never got used, or written down, unfortunately) where he was in some tavern, having a drink and chatting with some woman. In the middle of their conversation, an elven man passed by, and Noct turned to look after him, obviously finding the man attractive, and he then turned to the woman and commented on the man's appearence, stating that he, indeed, thought the man was attractive. The woman looked surprised and asked Noct if he was gay, and Noct just looked at her with a confused expression on his face. "What's gay?" To which she said that it was his sexuality, and that it determined whether he liked men or women. or both, and again he just looked at her with that confused expression on his face.

"Why would you put a name to that? How can a word decide whom you feel attracted to? Love is love, and sex is sex, and putting a name on it... Doesn't that create limits? I don't like limits. You should just feel what you feel, and don't get bound by a word that is supposed to decide what you feel, and for whom. Why would you label that?"

Why would you label that? That sentence - or question, rather- got to me, because it's true. He's right. Why does it have to have a name - a label? I'm not straight. I'm not a lesbian. I'm not a bisexual or a pansexual. I'm just me. And I'm wibbly wobbly sexy wexy! In short, I've finally found peace about things. I'm just me, and the me that I am doesn't need a label to decide what and who I like, and when. Depending on my mood, and the person in question, I can swing any way there is, and that'll change from day to day, so, I'll just take it as it comes. Simple as that.

He really challenged my view of myself, and he didn't stop there.

He challenged me art-wise as well, by having me doodle a picture of him with full frontal nudity! I don't do male nudity, cause no matter how you look at it I just can't stand penises. I'm sorry, I just don't. And so I refrain from drawing them. Or, rather, I used to, before Noct came into my life. And he taught me to step outside my boundaries and draw things I normally wouldn't, and I truly feel like that helped me develop a bit as an artist. I used to have limits to what I'd draw, and a very firm line I never wanted to cross, but Noct just erased that line for me, and pushed me headfirst beyond it. Which led me to do a lot of experimental doodles of things I normally wouldn't draw, and that, in turn, helped me grow more confident as an artist. And that feels good.

Of course, the challenge didn't stop there, and he changed a lot of things for me, and my general point of view regarding these things. And, most importantly, he challenged - and changed - the way I see my darling companions, and that change is rather drastic. It helped me realize something about myself, and my companions, that I had never seen before. I realized that I haven't seen my companions for who they truly were. I looked at them, and I didn't see them. I saw a disguise they had on that made them appear human. They all have it, that disguise, for various reasons (some of them have real forms that aren't even close to being humaniod in appearance), but all this time I've more or less forced them to keep that disguise on at all times. Because I've grown up here on earth, where you only have humans, I've been forcing them all to appear human. To have "normal" appearances, so they'd somehow fit into the reality that surrounds me. I don't know if it's because they all just sensed that I wanted to see them as human that made them come to me in their human disguises, or if it's just that I had a veil in front of my eyes that didn't allow me to see them as anything else, but either way I was human-izing them. I drew them with human appearances, and whenever I communicated with them they looked human companions to appear human.And that's wrong.

Noct is blue. Are humans normally blue? Nope! But he is, and it's because he's not a human. When he came into my life, he appeared as himself, and not as a human-ized version of him. And it made me take a step back and look at my companions, and for the first time I suddenly see them for who they TRULY are. After 20 years of working, I can now finally see things the way I was supposed to see them, and it made me want to completely change my approach to my work. Noct opened my eyes, and even though this has created a massive amount of work (there's a lot of things that needs to be changed now), I am so immensely happy about this! It feels as if I've been sitting inside this small box all these years while working, and all of a sudden someone opened that box and allowed me to step outside it. I was playing in a small puddle, thinking that this was all there was, and now I suddenly see that the puddle was connected to a gigantic ocean! It's as if I'm discovering my world for the first time all over again, and I'm stepping into it with the open mind of a child in awe.

The point of this rambling wall of text? I am now in the process of "re-designing" all of my companions. All of them are going through a change, cause now I can finally see who, and what, they truly are, and I'm gonna do my best to make sure everyone else sees it as well. I'm removing that human-ized veil I had thrown over them (or over my own eyes), and having them shed their disguises, allowing them to stand before me and proudly display who they really are. It's a lot of work, but it's exciting work! I'm redisovering my darling companions, and getting to know them all over again, and it's an exciting journey to make. And it's all thanks to this blue freak of mine that showed up out of nowhere and started pushing me.

Thank you, Noct.
And thank you, my darling companions.

It's thanks to all of you, and your influence, that I've gotten so far, and have reached so high, and without you in my life I wouldn't even be at all. I'll treasure that, always, and I'll keep pushing and challenging myself, and I'll fight my way through every dark dungeon that might appear, and I just know that I'll make it to the end, to the final boss, and with you by my side I'll defeat it. You are my strength, my support, and my salvation.

Mo okali, ati amirai.