Two NIMBY twits in Parkdale - bad middle class handling of the mad...

Alright, maybe I'm not done discussing a certain person after all, there is a bit more to say about my frustrations because of someone taking me out of context and committing what amounts to a variant of slander, at least in my opinion.  I have decided I have no choice but to transform into a total cow - a beautiful, glistening, gold plated, diamond encrusted total cow, who has very strong opinions about having been wronged by the Toronto law and mental health care system:

It had come to my attention in conversation from a mutual friend (who is now passed, he was also a teacher) that this guy, who did often seem pleasant to me, despite it all, actually felt very little for me, and saw me as a stalker.  For whatever reason, this fucked up my 20 something heart, because I was still hoping this misinterpretation of my confession at grad could be resolved somehow, it triggered unfortunate states.  This was also around the time when I began having strange spiritual problems, so it was just adding gasoline to the fire.

I became fixated once again on trying to solve it, I discovered what his phone number was, and in the oddness of my state, began opening up and babbling about things over the phone.  Again, none of it was particularly provocative, perhaps just a bit strange, and I opened the vault somewhat about my personality.  These attempts at contact were the result of desperation because of something closing in on me, not an attempt to be weird or clingy.  The woman in his life, let's call her The Iron Vagina (which I guess sounds a bit like a sexy Margaret Thatcher thing, but I'll go with it anyway) perhaps had a hand at that time in getting shit started where my character would become stranger looking on file, because she had the coldness of a glacier the final time I attempted a phone call with him, and what followed made my head spin... I am assuming she's a bit like the Trunchbull from "Matilda".  I am also assuming this man has no genitals, possibly because The Iron Vagina sawed them off, made shepherd's pie, and spoonfed it to him in some bizarre honeymoon hazing ritual, thus breaking his desire to be more reasonable with the awkwardness of youth.  I say this (and I also suspect pedophilia in her, BTW) because for some reason a former principal from my old high school (one who wasn't even a principal there anymore at the time, which is really strange to me) was called forward to become involved, because this is what my mother told me when someone blasted the situation to her in an email, which I find rather infantilizing, the tone of high school people becoming involved in my life again I mean, considering I was a 23 year old adult - I'm also just seeing that she's particularly guilty of some weird shit when I read the Akashic Records, child molestation, possibly infanticide, take it or leave it.  (I am also reading that this woman is delighting quite a bit in what she is getting away with when it comes to screwing with my reputation, that while she is the saboteur, he is simply the enabler.)  Based on how "nice" I have heard this guy tends to be, I found it strange coming from him, because most decent people would probably just get I was in crisis, and the response wouldn't have been this bizarre and heavy handed.  Whatever was said, my mother exploded at me, and I was forced into hospital.  I was discharged soon thereafter, disappeared for a while, living on the streets, and when my bank balance went to zero, I attempted suicide from the stress of everything while in a homeless shelter.

When I was really gone because of the entity (and I guess this is where I start to look pretty guilty to people who are not gentle with the mad), I found out where he lived, and I went to him to try to talk things over.  His response was to look at me with the eyes of a man in fear at the sight of me, and proceeded to turn and walk away.  I decided to leave this problem alone for a while.

At the time of the first arrest, I am wondering if details of my behaviour were not in fact embellished a bit, because the tone in court was freaky about what the crowns saw in my character.  I am not sure if it was The Iron Vagina who is responsible, or if it was my "friend", the hairless nightmare.  I also wonder if this form of slander, if this is in fact what one might call it, added to an argument for mania that shouldn't have existed, even though everyone agreed there was absolutely no need for me to take lithium.  I have neither the sexual promiscuity traits, nor the excessive spending habits, nor any other kind of manic trait, of a person with bipolar symptoms, nor was I even depressed at the time.  I had an intact hymen, (I still do, BTW) having never been broken (raped, yes, but anally), and I am also pretty darn good at making money last, so I find arguments ludicrous that this was some manic promiscuity thing with him, when I am not even sexually active, and that there was any mania to suggest schizoaffective disorder at all.  The arguments for mania, as I have said, would remain on file for over 15 years, even when I pointed out the obvious, and I am assuming it might have something to do with what people thought I was doing when I was arrested.  Again, the psychiatric profile probably would reveal all to me if I were to look at it, but I am still feeling far too vulnerable to do so.  The patient perspective is often ignored in psychiatry, in favour of what the doctor, and in this case, what the legal system saw.

And then this dude had the audacity to tell my lawyer to tell me that this was all "just to get me help", when it destroyed my life.  It was at that point that I decided to pick up a pen and start writing webcomics.  Because there were two charges, I was forced to move to "protect" this man, so I had to live in hospital for a year until equally shitty subsidized housing came up elsewhere.  It is perhaps all this and more that keeps me feeling unwell about everything that followed when I, at 19, had the "audacity" to admit feelings for him while in crisis.

At this point, I don't even give two damp shits about a friendship with him, if I could know compensation for my pain and suffering somehow because of what the system did to me, that might help with healing, but I doubt anyone would fight for me, it would probably be said that I don't have a case.  Maybe it's an autism trait, but I am obsessed with observing patterns in things, and there seems to be a pattern of the world not giving a shit about me at all with certain matters, defending many things that have happened to me as what I perhaps had created or deserve.

There are levels of responsibility I must take on for looking bizarre when unwell and the results of how that might affect my life and the lives around me, but when I put it all together, I still can't help but feel it was a bit much.  It's something that simply exploded with time, and came down to this.  I think others might have gotten a pass, but I didn't.

The result is the beautiful, glistening, gold plated, diamond encrusted total total cow that I have become, who simply wants to tell more of my backstory, to get feelings off my chest.  It's become clear to me, that in Toronto at least, if you are poor and mad enough, slander against you might get a pass, if it is coming from the middle class or higher levels of society.

With that it mind, I mostly keep my head down, but I will be writing about what I see in things.

-Saraƒin

A couple more things that irritate me...

Ok, I really need to calm down about this subject matter, but there's just a couple more items that make me a bit nuts about you know who:

Firstly (and this was mentioned by a former student, when we were both still in high school) I heard that a certain person had discussed with her products from Northbound Leather.  For those who don't know what that is, Northbound Leather is a fetish store in Liberty Village, Toronto, that sells both streetwear and kink gear.  Kinda weird to be discussing that with a teenager, I think?  Again, this is another student mentioning this to me, maybe it was just about the streetwear section, maybe he's in fact more of a Winners guy, but I still find it a bit weird.  Why is it that I'm deemed the strange one?

The next thing I heard that feels funny to me is that this guy gets together with former students and plays video games like old buddies.  I am not upset with this information, I am just annoyed that I was not permitted to level with him when I gave a shit, because it's considered a crime if it's coming from me.  He seems to be about mixed messages, because at one point, he insinuated that it was ok to stay in touch, but once I proved to be someone who had challenges, that changed.  I suppose this might be a case of not only ableism, but elitism?

So with that in mind, I am not impressed that, according to the Toronto law and mental health system, I have to be the one who is considered creepy.  It would be nice if more people fought for me, I am glad that the scientist did when it came to SCID, I am not sure what I am hoping for at this point with dingus, only that I feel profoundly outraged when I can't even be heard from the patient perspective when I have a problem with how I was treated.  I now not only hate psychiatry, I am afraid of it.  It's not a science, it's the power to make a person look however they want, on paper, based on what amounts to a Buzzfeed quiz.

I feel a bit like a character from Orange Is The New Black, trying to get a life going after serving time, with the amount of horseshit I have had to deal with, and the repercussions of dealing with the law.  It has come down to learning to be better at frugality, maintaining order in all levels of life so that nothing gets out of hand, living small so that I don't overspend.  There is absolutely no way I know how to escape this financial situation, because it seems to be my fate.  I went mad because of too much bullshit, some systemic, some metaphsyical, and there's not a lick of a chance of a higher education now.  My plan is to put away as much coin as I can scrap together, invest, and play by the rules, so that when my teeth fall out, I can afford the fancy dentures, not the Mister Ed talking horse level crap.  I simply lost time and opportunity, the world is too expensive now, and I have things to say about what life has been.

Okay, maybe that's all the venting about that for now.  Time to chill out, enjoy the rest of the summer, and get ready for my next art opening.

-Saraƒin

Reflections on accusations from the past...

This one will just be more musings on how things went wrong with a certain accusation and its long term impact on my self image.  Here we go:

So, as I have mentioned before, it was a different time in the early 2000s.  Mental health awareness trends had not yet taken off, and though there was Kids Help Phone and public service announcements that encouraged young people to reach out to older adults when in distress, the stigma of mental illness factor meant one's suffering could still be taken out of context when doing so, and my tone at the time was definitely awkward, being a silly 19 year old.  The result, in my case, was a snowballing effect of accusations of promiscuity that went so far as to make me feel self-destructive (there was a touch of sexism to what happened as well).  People didn't get it, and I began to see myself as ugly.  I didn't end up going to college or university, feeling as fucked up as I did (I went to Max The Mutt Animation School for a year much later, but dropped out).  My obsession, as I have said, was not about a person, but instead about solving something that went wrong after I was accused of coming onto him for admitting I had a crush while I was in crisis.  In my youthful mind, I was not yet self aware enough to see it for what it was, so I blamed myself, deciding that I was a bit of a creep, and I would occasionally physically abuse myself over it.  I was also not yet wise enough to realize that trying to provoke a conversation with this individual to resolve the misinterpretation was going to lead me into trouble.  You simply can't force someone to do something for you if they just don't want to, but try convincing younger me of that.

I am concluding that this is really just a case of something aging badly, and me still being neurotic about it.  My analyst pointed out to me that I have an obsessive mind... as a result, I am prone to suffering from playing old tapes over and over again.  All levels of psychosis and spiritual pain have been resolved, I don't self-injure anymore, yet how I was treated in the past still feels fucked up to me, considering its impact on my psychiatric profile, what the law thinks of me, and how events influenced certain narratives in my comics, and thus my public image as a mind.  I am not sure what the response would be to something like what I went through at grad for most young people at this point, I must remember it was a different time, and these sorts of things were not yet being called out as much.  Therapy couldn't solve my very strong feelings about it, but maybe time itself will heal all wounds.  Now that I'm in perimenopause, I am seeing my personality strengthen in many ways, so maybe even this will be something I can get over completely.  It's up to me to be strong when people prove that they just don't care.  I am also now apologizing to myself for all the times I have harmed myself with my art when ideas put in my head by mental health professionals influenced a distorted image of what my true intentions were.

I am not even sure I want a conversation with this individual anymore, because at this point, it might feel incredibly embarrassing.  I have absolutely no idea who he was, who he became, if his pleasant demeanour is sincere or superficial, it's a mystery.  Right now, I just want this fucking complex to go away, along with any lingering ideas out there that are false about me or my intentions with him.

Also, I want to mention that this man has more tattoos than a submarine fleet, which looks like it might mean one of several things: there’s an iguana he’s serving, a weed grow-op in his basement, he owns black leather furniture, a motorcycle, or there is some serious hanky panky shit going on.  Why on earth are people so shocked at the notion of a counterculture teenager having a little crush on him?  I wonder how many other awkward goth girls have gotten fucked over by him for being too honest.  My behaviour was no worse than any young woman's behaviour if they were not well.  I have been accused of being an outrageous stereotype of womanhood, and it's gone too far.  Some of us are just young and foolish, and sometimes we put our foot in our mouths... I long for a world that understands this.

The other thing these accusations of promiscuity did to me is destroy my trust in knowing a meaningful relationship with any man.  Because man has been so strange to me, having been my rapist, stalker, abuser in the dental chair, having felt me up, having assaulted me, having failed to protect me, and in this man's case, having accused me of coming onto him obsessively, I simply don't have crushes on any of them anymore, and haven't in decades.  The trauma from this and other things led me to believe it's impossible.  Again, I must insist I have no interest in being involved romantically with a married man... I am disgusted that this is what people in the system thought I was trying to do with him, that my name is associated with this kind of behaviour, it is simply not true.  I sensed a brother in him, I honestly just wanted to stay in touch, it is shocking what this became.  Though asexual, I used to have romantic crushes, I fear dying alone because of what this complex did to me.  I am no femcel - I have plenty of wit, charms, and fine social graces, but I turn everyone down, because I feel no sparks at all.

I will not be naming who this person is for these two reasons - I am a class act, and from what I understand, he is an absolute lunatic when he is angry, and he might go after me in some way... him or that fucking psychopathic pedophile wife.  I am never going to fuck with the middle class ever again. Also, it seems that in the end, all he cared about was his privacy… I’m honouring that.

In other news, my dear uncle recently passed, and I was at his memorial yesterday.  Good to see extended members of the family that I don't often see.  I get the sense my uncle recently visited me along with the soul of my father.  I was given a bookmark with my uncle's image on it, and placed it on my ancestor's shrine, which is where I put mementos of relatives and pets who have passed on.

It's nice to be able to have conversations with the other side.  The dead are sometimes lovelier than the living.

-Saraƒin

2008 - the year from hell...

Well, I was trying to avoid writing this one, in part because of wanting some privacy over certain matters, but also because in doing so it might put me at risk with certain people who love scolding me over absolutely nothing.  Let's talk about when I was arrested (twice) back in 2008.

So, yesterday I mentioned a certain individual that I have a complex with due to old accusations of wanting an affair when I was trying to level with him about something that went wrong at grad.  In my poor psychological state, while in withdrawal from Clopixol CTO injections, down to 98 lbs, with a stalker following me around, I was in crisis, and I knew that this accuser lived around the corner.  My desperate situation led me to reach out with a series of notes at his doorstop, asking for help.  Among these notes were odd musings about spirituality, concerns about dark forces, and advice on performing weird backyard rituals for protection, but no literal threats to anyone in that household.  I was so overwhelmed, I couldn't bear to use my telephone, being quite paranoid.  Ungrounded as I was, I didn't get that reaching out to him was a terrible idea.

At one point, a police officer and a nurse came to my building while I was in the backyard, which I assume was because I had been screaming a lot at the time, that somebody had complained about the noise.  Frightened, assuming it was related to a noise complaint, I went back inside with the intention to be quiet, and they left.  Reflecting on this, they might have been sent because of the notes, but I will never know for sure at this point.

My father, checking voicemail messages for me, told me there was one from the police, demanding that the notes come to an end, reminding me that this silly man wants nothing to do with having any discussions, and I should leave it because he clearly has a problem with me.  So, the notes stopped.  Days later, I was arrested anyway on accusations of criminal harassment... over asking for help.

I was put through court diversion, where extremely outrageous crowns laid into me about how horrible this all was, that my behaviour was atrocious, and that I should be ashamed of myself.  Ordered into hospital, I was shortly thereafter discharged, after being moved to the 1001 Queen St West CAMH site and feeling very freaked out by it.

Things escalated with the stalker, I was having horrible nightmares where he was going to murder me.  Overwhelmed by what I was going through psychologically, including the effects of the tone in court over the criminal harassment accusation (I had to show up often in court as part of the diversion process, where they would chew me up and spit me out), I screwed up.  Out of fear, the stalker was slightly injured by me, then I was arrested for assault.  Thank God he wasn't seriously hurt, it was no worse than perhaps the results of a bar fight.  But because of circumstances, they really threw the book at me.  That's why I went away for a year.

I emailed one of my former besties and told her the details of what happened.  Unfortunately, the tone of the email was odd, I guess she mixed up the details of what transpired, because I later heard there was gossip going around that I had assaulted the man that I had reached out to with the notes (she knows him too), which was not true.  She ghosted me, and I've never talked to her since, not even now that I'm well and living a stable, grounded life.  Some people were like this with me, while others simply needed distance for a while so I could sort myself out, which I understand entirely.  I was pretty wild, and people do need to feel safe.

As I reflect on the events of that year, I totally understand and am at peace with why the second arrest happened.  It makes sense that it should, I had clearly crossed a line at that point, and wasn't safe.  But the first arrest still feels absurd to me.  This man has accused me of being a stalker throughout the years because I had periodically reached out to demand answers after I became unwell with the complex, and it came down to this in a crisis.  Just another reason why I go around saying that Toronto hearts are as cold as Winnipeg winters when the going gets tough.  What he needs to understand is that he has nothing to worry about, I will never attempt to solve this with him ever again, because I know the kind of tone I will get from a man like him.

In my first graphic novel, "Asylum Squad Side Story: The Psychosis Diaries", there was a certain character who was loosely based on this person who had accused me of things.  Unfortunately, under the influence of my psychological state, as well as law and mental health putting ideas in my head about my intentions, details in that comic were not what I would write about now.  The narrative was heavily influenced by services desiring that I see myself as bizarre and personally responsible for circumstances.  That book became extremely painful literature for me to read, because it was not what I wanted to say, and that is one reason I will never republish it.

So why am I talking about this?  I am in a process of reflecting on everything now that I have really sorted myself out, having made it off Latuda and away from psychiatry's abusive hand in my life.  It's a very ugly story, and still extremely painful to think about.  The fact that several won't talk to me even now speaks volumes about who my real friends are, and is a reminder and a call to be as refined as possible so that none of this shit ever haunts me again.

I leave it up to those who don't wish to speak to me to change their minds, the ball is in their court.  I will continue to work on myself, seeking higher levels of refinement, proving to the world who I really am.

-Saraƒin

How regional DBT failed me...

I haven't really talked much about my experiences with Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, something I took in the early 2000s before my spiritual crisis had begun, but definitely after weirdness with the ouija board back in high school.  I took it because I believed I had Borderline Personality Disorder, and was recommended it by a psychiatrist.

Perhaps this therapy works well for some, I know Marsha Linehan struggled with BPD herself and designed it, which is interesting to me.  But the CAMH chapter I took DBT with back in the 2000s I feel shaped me to perceive myself and my traits incorrectly, ultimately did not help, and might have even hurt me.  I do not know how it influenced my psychiatric profile, only that fighting any idea about me that I didn't agree with took a very long time.

I started DBT shortly after graduation, a time when I was accused of wanting an erotic encounter with a certain person I had approached for help in a crisis.  Having opened the vault to him a bit with my confession of having a little crush, my tone at the time was misinterpreted, and when trying to contact him for answers, I was deemed a stalker.  In DBT, I was shaped to believe I had an obsession with him, that I had bizarre personality traits, and that I might even be a problem.  Ultimately, as I refined and came to understand myself better with age, I realized the obsession was from having been mishandled with what followed, I had developed a complex where I wanted to talk to him to resolve all bad blood.  Because this was forbidden for some reason (people didn't get what I was about anymore, I guess), I couldn't solve my complex with ease, and I was affected by how obnoxious that was for me.  DBT and other levels of psychiatry wanted me to see it as an erotic obsession, and not simply a fixation on solving the problem as a result of being taken out of context.  My asexuality was, I guess, not something they respected.  (This also happened during a period of time when the world was less interested in respecting mental health awareness, the DSM-IV-TR was still in use, and asexuality was not yet clinically recognized as a valid sexual orientation.)

I still wrestle with several complexes, eight years and thousands of dollars put towards analysis did all it could for me, at least it helped me to conquer certain levels of humiliation that I felt coming out of psychiatry.  There were things psychiatry "taught" me about myself that analysis helped me to realize were not true.  Though I am not an analysand anymore, I would say that my time with the Jungian was worth it, I am now much fonder of myself as a person, understanding that I was wronged.

So as far as DBT goes, I have heard it can be done well, but beware negative chapters.  It harmed me, like so many things in mental health care.

-Saraƒin

"St. Dymphna" - a Mad Pride psychedelic Catholic icon...

I just finished another painting!

After I completed the "St. Lucy of Syracuse" icon, I decided to do another that would be both a Catholic saint but also a nod to the Mad Pride movement.  Though I have done another more traditional looking St. Dymphna piece (with a detail that insinuated tabernanthe iboga, which has the chemical ibogaine in it, a miracle drug for both addiction and certain forms of mental illness) and St. Dymphna was heavily referenced in "Asylum Squad" as the patron saint that Liz Madder turned to when calling for help, I thought it was time to do another piece about her.

Though I can't say I feel a strong mystical tie to this particular saint (probably because other saints had already helped me, among them were St. Jude, St. Anthony, and St. Therese) she is nonetheless very important as a figure that many who struggle with mental health problems turn to when praying for wellness.  I got the sense it would be interesting imagery to have her standing upon a mound of pills and hypodermic needles, with "Saint Dymphna, Release Us, Glory In Madness" spelled out in Latin ransom note style lettering.  ("Glory In Madness" was the best translation my personal Rosetta Stone and good friend, former Poet Laureate and fellow Mad Pride creative, Richard Yves Sitoski, could come up with for "Mad Pride" in Latin, since the Google AI translation used the negative connotation for the word "Pride" when I attempted it with a literal translation of "Mad Pride", so that is why this phrase is included.)

Again, St. Dymphna was not a saint who I felt had a major hand in my recovery, but I did conquer levels of my challenges where I had to rely on psychiatric medications, so I wanted an image of this saint representing the achievement of that goal, towering over the pharmaceuticals.  Above her head is a Psi, representing both the field of psychology but also the soul.  I gave the background a wavy psychedelic gradient feel, in warm creams, suggesting glory.

As usual, this is made with acrylics, paint pens, Sharpies, imitation gold leaf, and ransom note style cut out letters on canvas.  The canvas is very sturdy, and measures 12" x 16".  I am contemplating the price for this one.  (I still need to do some details on the sides, so there's a bit more work to do before it can go in a gallery.)

I might take a little break from painting for a bit, unless something comes to mind that demands my attention, or I feel inspired by an upcoming art show theme.

-Saraƒin

Magnesium...

I took the advice of my mother (and a friend who agreed) and started taking magnesium powder in a glass of water before bed, to try to solve both insomnia and some leg cramping that I had been dealing with.  Weeks later, I have had very few nights where I needed to resort to my quarter tablet dose of Loxapine.  Also, the cramps in my legs have lessened.

Having graduated from Latuda in mid February, it became another goal of mine to let go of Loxapine tablets as PRNs as well.  Loxapine is still psychiatric medication, something I am trying to get away from entirely, knowing that long term use of these drugs can lead to complications.  I am hoping that all that I needed was just more magnesium in my diet.  I had tried melatonin, but it didn't help much at all.  Loxapine works, but it's extremely sedating, so I often felt groggy in the morning, and let's face it - neuroleptics aren't ideal.  There are other prescribed sleep aids that aren't benzos, antipsychotics, or habit forming, but when I inquired about them, they aren't covered by ODSP.

I have a general check-up appointment I need to schedule soon with my GP, I will have to tell him that magnesium seemed to be what I was lacking.  It will be interesting to see if getting off Latuda has lowered my cholesterol, because I don't tend to consume a lot of creamy sauces or foods high in cholesterol anymore.  I am still drinking alcohol, but am trying to reduce that once more (it's all light beverages, too).

I have committed to a daily workout routine of about 25 minutes on my yoga mat, a combination of stretches borrowed from yoga, and aerobic exercises.  My weight had been creeping up again because I had been eating too much takeout and was not working out as often, but now it looks like I am back down to a size medium.

It's hard to take long walks when it gets cold in the city, so I try to get as much of that in as I can during the summer season.  The rest of my exercise is my yoga mat floor routine.

-Saraƒin