# My life in a Nutshell or Jail Cell, I'm Not Sure of Which.



## Derwin (Sep 4, 2006)

I am not sure this belongs here. I have done some reading, and will attempt to describe to you my situation as best as I can. Sorry for the length and thank you for your time.

I'm not really sure how to describe how I feel. It?s not anger, not sadness, not fear, but all of them and none of them. I don?t know any word to exactly describe it.
It started in the winter; I was helped to notice something which I did not notice before. That?s too things. One, I am gay. Two, the world functions very differently than I believed most of my life. I am not entirely sure how, and cannot cite specific detail other than the small bits I have picked up through observation and not lost to fits of fear and confusion. Even what I do believe I know, is still subject to confusion due to my mass confusion about everything. I feel as though I had a bad reaction to my new awareness of things, began to become frightful of implications it would have for me. I also feel that in some way, my actions/inactions/inability to control my actions have caused either myself personal determent, or worse, has caused either a determent to many individuals, or perhaps a determent to some form of society as a whole.
Explicitly, I felt I was releasing thoughts which were disgusting; the kind of things that would really make you lose your appetite. Sexually explicit images, thoughts, racially charged remarks, for seemingly no reason. I felt no perceived anger towards anyone in any racial sense. I have tried to attribute the sexual aspects to my inability to accept my homosexuality, and to some extent, I believe I am attempting to hold on to any thoughts which may make me feel as though I am not homosexual. Perhaps these thoughts include these sexually explicit thoughts (not like fantasies, almost like flashing somebody), but they were sexual in content nonetheless, making me think that perhaps they are linked with what I perceive as a drive in me to maintain some sort of heterosexual thought process.
Unfounded and seemingly unfounded fears began to crop up. What if my new awareness was tied to only a limited number of individuals, or what if there were competition, or perhaps better said, opposition between factions of people regarding ways of thinking, ways of acting, ways of interacting with this awareness, or even worse, there was opposition, but the scales were very slanted, with one supreme, Rome, if you will, with only outlaying barbarian sects, working either against, or away from this said Rome. How would I know who was who, who would aid me, and who would deceive me?
To compound this confusion, my sexuality became a strong basis for these thoughts. Was I being ?trained? or ?taught? to be homosexual? Was I being convinced I was homosexual to throw me in a direction not of my choosing, but beneficial to someone somewhere? Or was it compassion, and people wanted me to stop lying to myself?
I cannot bring myself to believe the world is out to get me, and no matter what evidence I may have accumulated, I would always again convince myself that I was being paranoid, and that things were not as they seemed. But again, evidence more towards the factions, or groups, or whatever they may be than the direct actions towards me, but this evidence would reignite the fears of my actions causing some detrimental effect to me or people or a cause or an idea for which I care for.
Anyway, after a few months of this confusion, fear, and indecency, I was told very bluntly that I was ?locked out.? Of what, I am still not entirely sure. Perhaps of the perspective that comes with this awareness, perhaps of a group or sect, perhaps of the communal awareness, perhaps of something completely different, I cannot positively say. However, I have had a strong sense based on actions and words of others, and my own reasoning that it has a strong connection to this awareness, and even more strongly, to pot. Pot seems to cultivate the fears, the indecencies and the confusion.
This has sometimes lead me to believe that it is only in my mind that my world has gone to hell, and were I able to avoid my paranoid fears, I could open my eyes to a much more kind, much more compassionate world. Perhaps were I to open my eyes however, it would be somewhere in the grey. Perhaps I am not being specifically singled out, perhaps I have not done much in the way of harm. Perhaps my condition is only punishment for my actions. Perhaps within this whatever you may call it, there exists, as good as could be written down to most, laws and rules, which I have (to myself, seemingly unknowingly) broken. However, most of the things which I believe I have done wrong, I can find some shred of evidence to prove there may have actually been an infraction on my part, so I have thus knowingly broken these rules or laws, negating any argument of ignorance on my part.
After this locking out, I believed I had lost some aspect of this awareness, but my sight of it so clouded, I could not tell if any at all or what was missing. Was it my choice to stop this? Was I force to stop this? Am I bound so that I cannot affect that I was stopped? Did I have a chance to not do what I had done? So many questions, and no answers.
Better yet, I feel I am forced to abide by these rules, yet I feel I do not know them. Is it that I am only to abide by the rules I know, and will know when I have not done so? Have I been informed? Amongst my confusion, has someone communicated this to me, or was I only being paranoid or confused at the time?
Were I just paranoid, I would need to know to what extent, so I could limit the set of actions I would take, based on the reality of my situation. Were I totally correct, what am I to do? Do I wander as a blind man in the world of the newly seeing? Do I do what I can with what I have? Or would that just be a waste of my time, and should I just attempt to enjoy what life I have left? Should I throw caution to the wind, get high, think what I want, how I want? Probably not that. The evidence it specific enough that I can almost surely say the answer to the last question is no. But to what part of that question? Is it because I am unchangeably unfit? Past savabley broken? Unwilling or unknowledgable to take the steps for correction? None of the above? How could I know?
Pondering these many many possibilities of reality, I attempted to go along with what reality I could gather for a few months. That is until I experienced the most disturbing, horrific feeling I could have ever felt. I am not sure who it reached, and if it reached who I believe it had, I feel no better than a child molester or a rapist for having unleashed what was unfurled. Pain and sadness seized my body, I was unable to concentrate (as I usually am) or think in any relative state of clearness, even from my perspective. I drove home sobbing my eyes out at four in the morning on a weekday, crawled to the foot of my mothers bed and wept for hours. The next few weeks, I spent curled in a ball, horrified at a) what I had possibly done, and b) where this would leave me.
Had that been the straw that broke the camel?s back? Had that been the anvil tossed on the broken backed camel a week after his collapse? Had I imagined the whole thing?
Anyone would tell me my perception of reality is distorted, and would attempt to convince me to return to the societal norm of perception of reality. However, after experiencing what I have, and seeing what I have seen, hearing what I heard, and knowing what I know, I cannot fully do that. I can admit that many, and I mean many, facets of my reality are flawed, distorted, or even dead wrong, but I am as sure as I am of my own existence that to some extent, my perception is correct.
This leaves me five or so months after my break down. I spent the summer working, reeling from the horrific things I may or may not have done as I merely walked down the street or drove my car. I worked hard at my job, and learned much in the field of physics, and as time passed, and I spent time around my mother and my friends, playing pool, playing Nintendo, or just ?talking about the weather.? I eventually began to feel as if I could at least if not accept my reality, begin to deal with whatever reality was out there however I could via my very limited and entanglingly confusing perspective of it.
Then I got back to school.. ?Fuck it.? I started smoking weed again, and back it came. Not the confusion. Not the awareness. The evidence that I was somehow or another, in the wrong. Evidence, not speculation. Of course, it is always in a round about way, but that is the nature of this perspective of reality. It is not my choosing, and I am not sure how it came to be so, but I have been assured, it is so. So where does that leave me now, today? I am ?locked out,? I am continuing to break some sort of rule, believably related to marijuana or how it is affecting or how I am reacting to the altered state of mind and perception.
All I am left with is the feeling that I truly am locked out, in by far, the most literal sense of the word. Anger? At who? Me? Them? Them who? Fear? Of what? Myself? My sexuality, or my responses to it? Of them? Them who? Sadness? For myself? Should I pity myself? Should I pity myself if I with the most semblance of truth directed my course this way? Should I feel ashamed? Should I not? Could I help any of this? Should I feel guilty for my actions? How can you feel guilt when you have no clue as to what the consequences are, malevolent or benign? What do I do? As I said before, do I just live my life for what its worth? Have a beer, watch the game, embrace our societies accepted ways of passing time and enjoying one?s self? Should I cast aside all I have seen, return to the darkness, and pretend it was a dream? If you had seen the light, even if they told you they would kill you if you were to disobey, would you return to the cave, forever condemned to darkness? Is there any hope? Why should I hope, when it may or may not, but in many likelihoods, may lead to false hopes and false beliefs chasing such false hopes? How do I go about pursing the ends of these hopes? How do I not purse the means to the ends of my hopes? How do I obey my deem of locked out, when my waking conscious is surrounded by the fact that there is something from which I am locked away from and the fact that were my perception of the locked out deem incorrect, I may cause more trouble for myself or may miss some golden opportunity for return?
How do you express those emotions, those feelings into a word? Confusion and fear are the common thread, but that is not what I feel facing these problems. Standing next to a fire, I can tell you a man feels heat. I cannot tell you though how he feels mentally about standing next to a fire. Is he scared? Is he comforted? I am afraid. I am confused. But I also feel whatever it is I feel as I confront my reality, and I cannot express this feeling to you any better than through every word on these pages. It cannot be summed up or categorized or recognized. It is my own feeling, my own perception, my own thoughts that define how I feel, and I am sure it is nothing I can say to you in words.

Why?

I was born into this world ready to ascend the pedestal, now I am nothing better than a deer in your headlights, just waiting for the day I unknowingly step in front of your car.

Imagine being a deer, and knowing that despite your truly most valiant exertions, you could never even touch the abilities that a human being has, and unsure of whether humans intend for you to die, to enjoy you for amusement, are pestered by your presence or do not care more for you than you would care for a deer on the side of the road watching you pass, or than you would care for a deer moved to the side of the road to allow traffic to pass.
What would you do, if you were this deer?

That is a strong part of what I feel. Not just the uncertainty of action, but the utter humanlessness that accompanies such a situation. I have been depraved of my humanity and reduced to another particle in the universe.

Why?


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

i don't know for sure if you are suffering from dp, but you definitely have a situation that can trigger it. as you probably know, marijuana is a known trigger for dp/dr.

also very relevant, however, is your struggle over sexuality. there are a number of dp cases that have been born out of the stress that a struggle over sexuality can cause. you probably should try and identify what is causing you the most stress over that issue. is it your family? is it the pressures of society? is it religious considerations? if you can first identify the root causes of this stress you might at least be able to find some resolution there and then move on to tackling the dp/dr/altered reality you are talking about...


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