I had to stop taking the Risperdal.
First off, it was giving me really low blood preassure.
Second of all, it was making me too comfortable with life.
I was no longer taking care of myself, because no matter what I did I felt like it was just fine.
Consequently, I pushed my body too far, with the drinking, the caffienateing, and the lack of sleep.
I became very sick.
Not conincidently, I only started to get better when I could feel the Risperdal wearing off.
So I have to quit taking it.
That's just fine with me.
It was making me feel like an alien.
Not human.
I may be depressed in my everyday life, but at least I feel real, at least I feel solid, at least I feel connected.

Another day, another few hours spent staring at a computer screen. I'm just gearing up to set myself to get ready to write some papers, so many of which (three!) are due by next week. They're short papers, with little research required, so it's less a matter of pushing myself mentally to understand the material and more a matter of pushing myself physically to sit down and just type out the stupid things.

Oh, by the way, I've decided that I'm going to live in Mongolia in my old age, or as soon as I can live without having to work in a fixed place. I'm not going to live nomadically on the steepes, drinking fermented yak mare milk and herding cattle through sparse, rugged landscapes. What kind of masochist would I have to be to do that? No, I'm going to drink my fermented yak mare milk in the bleak and souless cities, where I'm convinced I'll finally be able to settle down and devote myself to learning how to really write.

Last night I sat down at the computer and wrote for 5 hours straight, only taking little breaks for water and such. It felt good, but it also put me a little on edge: all that creativity can be very draining; and in the case of fiction, when one is really in the zone the fictional world becomes very real to the writer, and the boundary between reality and fantasy can become just a little bit blurred. And that's not just me who says that, alot of writers have commented on that. It just so happens that the story I was working on last night has alot of rather dramatic scenes with strong emotions associated with them. Whether or not I effectively communicated the intensity of the scenes through my words, I was definitely feeling them at the time of writing. This made the long walk home from the computer lab a little bit more interesting than I would have liked it to be. Nothing happened, but that nothing was very intense.

Well, it's a second draft, what I was working on last night, but I changed so much of the plot and the characters that this rewrite was more like a first draft. I was pretty pleased with it, and in a moment of post-conception ecstasty I accosted the long haired, thin faced, glasses wearing guy who was working at the lab, asking him if he wanted to read my story. He agreeably, and somewhat fearfully, said yes, and so I e-mailed a copy to him. He's a painter, I found out, and a glass blower too. He's sold one piece of glasswork to the John Glenn Institute for 75 dollars, but no one seems to be interested in the paintings. "They're really just for me" he said. "The glasswork, people look at it and think 'glass--pretty' so it's easy to sell it."

Is it the same for fiction, that people are attracted to written works that are pretty, agreeable, and not too demanding? I don't think so. Visual works tend to be on display all the time, so one wants to have something that is easy to digest, and not likely to cause strong emotions that might jar one out of one's happy medium. Fiction, on the other hand, is a personal, momentary experience. People are looking to enter into a new world, where things are more intense, more extreme than their everyday life. Then, when the fantasy becomes too much, it's easy to close the book and place it on the shelf, leaving it for a time when one has the luxury of feeling something that will disrupt their everyday existance.

Anyway, I printed out a copy of my story, and sat down in an abandoned staircase to read it. It kind of sucked, of course. It didn't have anywhere near the same impact that the images in my head did, and I immediately regretted passing it on to a stranger. And the typos! Oy!

Well, if anyone else wants to have a look at it, and let me know what they think is missing, then get me your e-mail address and I'll send one off to you.

Well, I've been having trouble sleeping (as usual). I don't want to take the over-the-counter sleeping aids, because I've used them alot in the past with rather negative effects, like difficulty waking-up, memory problems, and information processing problems. So I've decided to go back onto the Risperdal and see if that works. I've been taking it for about three days now, but it doesn't seem to be making me sleepy yet. I had the same experience when I was taking it before, where it didn't effect my sleeping patterns at first, but later on acted as a strong sedative, so I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

But the Risperdal is also helping me feel more balanced emotionally, which is nice, and which makes my sleeping diffiuculties seem like less of a problem. However, like the last time I took Risperdal, it's also making me feel more paranoid. This is ironic, because it's supposed to make me feel less paranoid. I don't buy my psychiatrist's argument that it's just bringing things up to the surface that were being ignored before. This is the second time that I've taken Risperdal, and both times now the paranoia has hit me like a ton of bricks, in marked contrast to my everyday life. This is unfortunate, because I feel like my paranoia is one part of my illness that I've had a lot of success with keeping under control without medication. It would be a shame if I started to lose the progress that I've made.

Well, the Risperdal that I'm taking now is just the stuff that's leftover from when I was taking it before. When it runs out I'm going to go see my psychiatrist and ask her if she is willing to treat just my depression, and to leave the schizo stuff alone for now. All I really need is something to balance my moods out just the littlest bit, because my depression is not so very strong, only affects my life a little bit, and only needs a mild readjustment to make me happy with the way things are going. And if she refuses to help with the depression without treating the schizo stuff? Well, I guess I'll be looking for a new psychiatrist then.

Yeah, like I said in my last entry, I'm totally not ready for a boyfriend. Take, for example, my good straight friend The Amatuer Musician. I'm totally in love with him. He's totally dorky and boring looking, with his plain sweaters in cheap fabrics, his Target issue blue jeans, and his 1950's businessman haircut. He's skinny, a little misshapen, with sallow skin and big gums. But he's cute as hell (other gay friends of mine have agreed) and so easy to get along with. He's gotten along with everyone I've introduced him to, and seems equally relaxed in most all situations. Plus, he's a socialist, and so very, very ethical about his relations with other people, without getting all preachy and self-righteous about it. For crying out loud, he chose Bjork's "Venus as a Boy" on the Jukebox at Larry's tonight. I'm in love with him, and would die of happiness if he would reveal to me "I'm secretly gay, and I've fallen in love with you."

That is, however, until it actually happened. The second he actually uttered the words I would realize, with great clarity, how completely annoying he is, and how much I would really enjoy just not being around him anymore. All the pleasant, relaxing silences would turn into awkward, oppresive silences. All the pleasant, easy banter would stop, and we'd be left with forced, boring small talk. And I'm just not down with that. I don't want the fun times to stop, to be stymied by a sense of obligation and neediness.

Like, for right now I can fall as in love with him as I want, and run no risk of anything coming from it. I can have my cake and eat it too; have all those pleasurable crushed-out emotions, without any of the risk of actually getting into some weird, stifling relationship. No, we can just enjoy each other, and not worry about it.

Queerday totally rocks. Why does it rock, you ask? Is it because of the concise and informative news articles about important gay related issues, which help keep me connected to the larger gay community, and keep me from forgetting that me and my people are, in fact, oppressed? No. I couldn't care less about that. The real value of Queerday is that they occasionally post pictures of cute guys. In fact, I think that right now they have a picture posted of who may be the cutest guy I've ever seen in my entire life It's the guy on the right, with the dirty-yet-dazzling smile, the drunken, soulful eyes, the fresh-yet-weathered skin, and the rough-yet-refined beard. The guy on the left is really not my type.

I surprised myself the other day. I was talking to some guy, some Native American trucker looking guy, when I was out and about. He was gay, and of course I was gay, and we were flirting somewhat (alright, alright...we were having anonymous sex down by the river). After we had been going at it for awhile, what with the oral sex and mutual masturbation and such, he was all like "So...you have an 'other half'?" I was all like "Huh?" He got a little flustered then, and forced himself to say "I mean, are you seeing someone?"

Here's the surprising part: what immediately came out of my mouth was "Pshaw! Of course not! The last thing I need is some boyfriend hanging around, cramping my style and telling me what to do." He got this bemused look on his face, and said "Yeah, that's true," and that was the end of that line of conversation.

What was so surprising about my statement though, was that even though I just said it to avoid being pursued by this guy in particular, I think I actually kind of meant it, like in a general sense. My official stance on the subject of having a boyfriend is that it's a nice idea, and if I met someone who I was in to I would be more than happy to be with them. The reality, however, is that when I imagine being part of couple I get...nervous? Tense, definitely. And irritated. Oppressed. Restricted. Trapped.

My roommate is having difficulties, but it's not so bad, at least not for me. I guess he's in horrible pain all the time. I don't know. It's hard to know what's serious for him. He plays alot of little head games with people, using little secretive, manipulative strategies to get what he wants instead of just asking for it, so it's hard to know when something he says is for real and when he's actually trying to get something else.

It's difficult living with someone who demands so much attention. On the other hand, in lieu of a television he is a good source of entertainment. Plus, I'm getting good at ignoring him when I need to focus on other things.

I'm afraid to write. I'm afraid of being judged. I have to reaffrim to myself, once again, that I write this blog for my own benefit, not for the pleasure of others. I can't let what other people think of me stop me from doing something that I know is really good for me, i.e. externalizing what's going on inside of me in order to see who I am more clearly.

I've been so tired lately. It's the same old shit that I allways go through: I never get enough sleep, I can't wake up enough to care about what's going on around me. I'm in survival mode, not accomplishment mode. It's almost too much just to do what I'm required to do, let alone go beyond that to do things that are actually interesting and life-affirming to me. Yet I know that if I do take the time to do positive things like blogging and excercising then the day-to-day shit that I gotta do gets done alot easier and effectively.

I think the problem is that everything feels like a test: no matter what I do I'm holding myself up to some ideal. I can't say there's anything wrong with that, except that I'm starting to feel really bad about not living up to that ideal. It's painful.

Also, I'm really disliking people these days. They're so annoying! The problem is the same thing as above: I feel really judged by them, like I'm not living up to some ideal that they got in their heads about what a good person is supposed to be. But in this case I don't even want to live up the ideal: I think their ideas are kinda stupid and arbitrary, and I kinda just want them to fuck off and go impose their worldview on somebody else.

I've been feeling really bad about myself lately. Parts of me are happy, big parts, especially my creative side and my working side. Socially, however, I feel like a mess.

NearFalse Rocks!

I just got the best birthday present I could possibly get (and no, that's not hyperbole, it's the truth). We read one of my poems in my poetry class today, and alot of the other students were really enthusiastic about my poem. Usually we spend most of our time criticizing each other's poems, but for my poem they were seriously discussing it, like making arguments about interpretation by citing lines, and considering how the different evidence changes interpretation, and basically just treating my poem with respect, like it was real art. After class let out, three different people came up to me to let me know how much they liked my poem, and how they liked all my poems (though most of them did say that this one was the best).

It feels so nice to have someone compliment my work. My fiction writing class is going totally down the drain, my work is really not very good, and neither does anyone else. I felt like I was just doing the wrong thing, like maybe I was fooling myself thinking that I could be anything like a writer, but now that's all changed. At least I show promise with poetry. That's enough for me to go on, and should keep me happy for several days.

Today is my birthday. I am 27 years old. My gift to myself today will be to make sure that I get lots of work done, eat healthily, remain sober (both in regards to drugs and sex), and generally just take good care of myself. This might sound like a rather boring gift to some people, but for someone as chaotic and disrupted as myself a moment of orderly peace is a real treat.

It's also the b-day of The Talker. Happy Birthday Mr. Talker!