To nobody in particular

You and I have known each other for a while now, then again we haven't

We have been acquaintances, but i do not know if that automatically means that we really know each other

Things changed a while back, and you know why.

Despite this I dont think it is possible for anyone to really know either of us

 

I could tell you that you have  this smile... the smile... the smile that lights up the room in ways I thought were limited only to poetry, fiction, and the words of hopless romantics.

Truly I finally understand what the phrase means. It only took 23 years or so.

I could tell you this, but the sad truth is it wouldnt make a difference

You would never believe me, and it is not something you can simply convince a person of.

 

We are far too much alike. I see so many parts of myself in you, and this makes me afraid for you.

That cruely of creating something so stunning, that cannot appreciate itself, is in itself proof of our abandonment

I can spout off all the words in my vocabulary trying to convince you against this delusion... but in a rare moment of insight i can only see you doing the same for me, pounding against the same wall

Each trying to free each other of their prison, without regard that we are trapped as well.

 

I do not yet know why we have crossed paths, for what part of our destiny demands it

We may well save each other, or we may well each learn from the other how to be more guarded, more demanding, and ever more dissatisfied with what we are becoming

No matter what i tell you, it will only prove that you are good enough for me, but I can never change whether or not you are good enough for yourself.

Happy endings just dont happen for shooting stars. They shine brilliantly, only to burn up in the end never knowing their impact on the world they only just met.

I sit in the sun and think to myself

Do I deserve to be here?

Is my purpose to live or do I live for a purpose?

Who the hell decided it had to be me?

I am surprised every single time

This wasnt something that I asked for, as the light breaks in

Disorienting in its own way

 

3 weeks now

3 weeks now without the safety net

3 weeks now without the safety net and I miss it

3 weeks...

It was like losing a good friend, and I'll miss you man, but its time to go

One in the morning, one to dull the pain, one more to feel numb

I wake up alone now

 

I dont fear for pain now

I do not fear for the challenges that i will face

For what can come to pass that can compare to what has already?

Do you even know how to kill me?

You will knock me down, and forever I will only get up, stronger each time

 

I live in a world now only of wishes

I wish that this wasnt all for nothing

I wish that this will be easier for those that follow me

I hope that I did good by those along the way

I wish that one day she will notice me

While sitting and feeling slightly ashamed and disappointed in myself for not only watching but thoroughly enjoying Grey's Anatomy, I began to think over the state of my own life. They were quite right, and it has been said before, that it is not the big days in our lives that are in fact big days of our lives. Its not the day you were looking forward to, or anticipating that is going to have the biggest impact, but rather its the kind of things that blindside you on some idle tuesday (a concept that I absolutely love) that really make all the difference in your own personal world.

Its not what has happened but what will happen that really matters.

Sometimes the enourmous weight of our past can start to take precidence over the present, and we can miss those idle tuesdays entirely. I think that sometimes when we allow the past to take precidence over the present, it is not the present that makes up the bulk of our lives but rather that which we relive. It is some inadequacy, past pain, or need to be perfect in order to find meaning in our lot in life that becomes our life, and we miss everything else. Its a scary concept. If its the past that we live, then how much are we really living? Its those same things that pass before our eyes each night before we drift off to sleep that make up our life.

For the first time in a long time I recognize myself when I look in the mirror. For this I owe the credit not to myself but to the rest of you. I have watched people pour their hearts into their work, I have watched people break, people mend, I have watched people find each other, lose each other, and I have seen hope through it all, in all of your eyes. I think we see each other, and ourselves in our struggle. Sometimes (one conversation in particular comes to mind here), we see more of ourselves in each other than we ever really predicted (even though we have known each other a while). We are all in this together.

I think there is this misconception that what is the most beautiful and best is when we are smiling, happy, and acting like everything is alright, and we like everyone around us. I disagree. I think we are at our greatest grace, our most beautiful, and most inspiring when we show weakness, when we show that we are hurt, that we are a little damaged, tired, and weighted down, but we get right back up anyway and with a second wind. For a moment we break from the past into the present. We lost some battles but we will win the war.

Congradulations class of 2009, you earned it.

Kyle

Ps: did you save any answer sheets? seriously?!

I cannot say that too much has actually  changed in my life lately. I live in the same house, talk to my parents about as much as i did, still talk to the same psychiatrist, still have a lot of the same things that I face daily, and save for a new pair of shoes and a shirt not much has changed in my closet either.

That all said, I am not the same. It has been coming in spurts for some time now, and its not quite as I expected, but I am finally starting to not just deal with but let go of some of the things that happened to me when I was younger.

Its been a good year, and I have done well. On my last set of exams, of the 2 i have gotten back so far, I had tied for highest mark in the class (and these were all 4000 level courses). I taught myself some autobody work over the summer, and its looking like this summer coming up i will be able to finish working on the exterior of my truck, having made it look a lot closer to brand new. I am, for the first time, starting to get noticed in my classes as having some skills and insights of value. In about a week period I came up with a new test of attention (by accident), that may turn into a thesis project that hasnt been done before, and even actually studied with other people for my exams. I always assumed that because i think so differently from other people that I just had to do things on my own, and that we would just end up distracting each other. That didnt happen, in fact as I said, my exams (and marks in general) are better than they have ever been, and it turns out a lot of the tricks and strategies i had been using were helpful to the people I worked with. It turns out that I am actually a very good teacher for a lot of things, and have even been spending more and more time down at the peer support office teaching study strategies and helping review essays, to almost universal positive response.

I came across some research this year that seems to suggest i am not nearly as different as I once thought. I found a study characterizing people with high IQ's and ADHD, and how they tend to have a unique set of issues due to the interaction of these 2 things, that actually sums up a lot of what i went through. I was always told that i was different because of a subclinical autism that i had just learned to deal with. In the light of the new information, it might be possible that I have just had a life long journey of learning how to focus and apply myself properly, rather than a fundamentally messed up brain. As strange as it may sound, this has given me an excuse to rejoin the human race. The 2 explainations dont change much about my history, but the new one paints a much better future, one where the possibility of being a more normal person is suddenly in my hands.

This idea was not the reason, but rather the last straw, for my change of heart. It was at that moment that i finally sighed and looked away from the rear view mirror and looked ahead. The idea that this can end, that being on the outside looking in, could one day change, is a very new idea, and an exciting one. As sad as it may sound, the possibility of changing my situation always seemed somewhere off elsewhere and not terribly likely; something i could hope for but secretly knew wouldnt happen.

One way this change has expressed itself in my life has been seen in me being seemingly a lot more frustrated than usual. I actually see this as a good thing, because the reason that is happening is that I am looking away from blaming the past and am noticing that I have been letting a lot of shit go in the present, that im just starting to really notice. These are things that didnt bother me before because I assumed they things i couldnt change, and so didnt pay much attention.

I have had it with a lot of things lately. Some of the shit i deal with from my friends cannot continue, and I can not continue to put up with and deal with their baggage constantly while my own goes completely unattended. I can not continue ignoring some of the things that I do back to them either, I can be a pain in the ass, and often needlessly so, and I need to deal with my stuff so that I can have something more to offer to those around me. I dont think I can deal with my sisters issues anymore. This has just gone on too long, and I dont see hope for change any time soon through anything i could do. Sometimes she pisses me off, because everything that happened to her, that has left her with such constant emotional and anger issues (that often get taken out on me), were all things that happend to *me* too growing up. Not only did all the same things happen to me, but I had a number of *extra* things that happened to me too, and yet i still manage to try and be pleasant, to have some insight into myself, and to maintain friendships. There comes a point where I just can not be the one to keep adapting to other people who make no effort to reciprocate. One consequence of my new non-freak identity is that I am not necessarily the problem in a given interaction, and sometimes other people have to deal with their half of the problem instead of me constantly compromising. In my sister's case, I can not constantly take her abuse, while on her good days listening to her problems and complaining about our parents and how her life sucks and its everyone elses fault, whilst if i am having a bad day, her being sympathetic is entirely contingent on what mood she is in. Even if She is in a good mood, she is so off-the-charts ADHD that she could give to shits to listen to anything I have to say anyway.

Finally, I need to start putting myself out there again. I can not let myself keep getting more and more withdrawn emotionally, this has gotten out of hand. There is no excuse why I could ask someone out, and not over think things to the point that I completely lose interest and change my mind, back when i was 18, but somehow not manage now at nearly the age of 23. That is just not acceptable.

Well time for work now lol, cheers

Kyle

Im going to postpone my essay series, as I really needed to write something out of my system:

I believe angels walk among us.
 They are not here to show us the way, to lead us from the world as it is
 They are not on a mission, the war is over, and the troops have gone home.

I believe they walk only because they cannot fly
 They are not waiting to be lifted up above us, exalted for what they are
 They walk with broken wings, they walk because they are denied from the sky, and have long forgotten the clouds.

I believe I have met angels
 They were not perfect, but they were the best of us
 They did not reveal themselves right away, they did not even know what they were, and they never left this world

I believe we can mend their wings
 They may walk today, having forgotten the sky
 They can find it again, they can be saved, time has not dulled them

I believe I have seen this
 She started as one of us, no better and no worse
 She set the wing, cradled it, healed it

I saw an angel fly once
 This changed everything, anything was now possible
 This meant that even this fallen angel could fly again, this meant she could regain her wings, and this meant we could too

I believe I know my place in this
 This was not caused by my hand, I did not do this
 This happened in front of me, this was meant for me to see, and this was a privelage I knew to honor

I believe that angels are everywhere
 They are your brothers, and your sisters
 They are your mothers, your fathers, and your grandparents

Beautiful angel
 I see you for what light you shine on the world, I know you cradle your wing
 I want to be there when you fly, I want to help you fly, and someday ...

I can wait for an angel
 You can always tell one, you only have to look
 You have to be willing to see an angel, you have to be ready, and you have to trust


 

Here is the next essay in this series; still grade 12:
 

This unit in sensation and perception has been one in which i have learned a great deal of new material. The material of which i had the least prior knowledge was that about sensation. I was particularly interested in how the sensations of extreme cold and pleasant warmth could be combined into the sensation of burning. This was not intuitive to me and I found it a little startling, although now that I think about it, it does make sense. The part of the perception unit that I found the most interesting was about how attention and expectation can affect ones perception of the world. It made me wonder about how this could be applied to me, although there really is no way I know of to reliably make judgments  there in. The perception unit has also made me consider the accuracy of one person's ability to understand the rationale and kind of thinking behind another;s behavior is limited because the one evaluating has a set of prejudices and knowledge that he/she has experined for a lifetime and has not ever had the opportunity to experience anything to compare with. In short you have only ever known your own brain so how can you know what another persons brain is really like? This brings up a series of questions about what we know of perception, like "how many rules of perception have we missed because it didnt occur to us that a rule was involved?" and "how realistic is our perception of others behavior, due to a lack of knowledge involved in the rationale behind that behavior?" We can even say, perhaps, that a possible reason the holistic functioning of the mind is beyond us is that we do not have the resources or perspective to really make all the connections necessary out of what we do know  of the mind. This is, however, one of the interesting things about psychology, there is always another level of understanding to grasp, or another challenge to be brough about by every question answered. I am looking for more unanswered questions in the months to come.

the end
This disturbs me that i was already thinking along these lines so early. Imagine if i had the attention span to complete such thoughts at that time? where would I be now?

Kyle Morrissey

The following is a collection of small essays that I wrote while still in high school for an intro psych course that i was taking. I have been revisiting my past, and how I got to where I am lately, and i think before going into some of the changes going on with me, I should start at the begining. So here is me at about 17 years of age years ago [God dam I needed humility lol]:

I have studied Psychology in one form or another for many years now. I have always had an aptitude for psychology and as I learn more about it I onbly become more interested in it. My studies in psychology have been almost entirely during my own time; my only exception having been my grade 11 university Intro: Psychology, anthropology, and Sociology course. I began primarily when studying my attention defiict disorder in terms of treatment, biological basis, and psychological effects. My largely successful attempt at self-treatment has become the longest running, most organized, and most ambitious career aspiration of my life. So far in this course I have not been challenged nor learned a great deal in terms of terminology, biology, or psychological perspectives because i have spent so much time on my own learning material such as this. This does not make what we have done so far any less valuable to me. Although many others in the class may be focused on learning what the experimental method is and how to define it, I am learning how to describe it and organize associated material. The free response assignment in particular was very helpful as a way of learning organization skills in written psychological material. All that we have done so far has taught me a great deal in this area. I have also been able to fill gaps in my knowledge base such as workable definitions for the psychological perspectives and concrete examples of ethics issues in psychology as well as making connections of this to other things we have looked at in helping myself further specialize what areas of psychology i wish to participate in, in the future. This group activity concerning the sniper on the college campus was a very amusing one in a way because i had seen a documentary on the event and hypothesized many of the same explanations back then as to what had drivin the shooter to commit those violent acts as had much of the class did just recently. I chose to attend John Taylor based on the availability of this course, because my other potential schools did not have it. I am extremely pleased with the course content and expect to have a very enjoyable year.

-----

Good lord I was such a robot.

k

Hmmm... seems that I have not written anything in a while; now is as good a time as any

Things have really been starting to get real over here. I have been wondering for some time now, what it is that I am ultimately going to do with my life. I mean sure, I am going to be doing something in Clinical Psych, but that could encompass anything from teaching to therapy really. And since I am a freak... this line of thought logically leads me into wondering how it is that I am ultimately going to resolve what I am.

I have never really managed to pull off being like everyone else, but more than simple awkwardness, I was different. On some deep level I looked on my fellow people as a different species entirely. I am of a different sort, a different kind. I guess I could say i went into this field  in an attempt to find my own humanity, and in a way I have, though less so than I really would of liked. I grew up being trained by myself and others, to "fake it", and do everything in my power to become like other people, to become "normal", for fear of what would happen to me if I was found out. It was my parents idea. I cant blame them for it. They took a long time trying to find a school for me after the first time it got out. But ultimately it was I who took it to a completely other level. What started out as an effort to keep me in regular classes, turned into a quest to abolish everything unique about me, to not only learn how to blend in and do the things others could that i could not, but to end or hide those things that I could do that they could not. What is perhaps most disturbing is not only did I largely succeed, but I still find myself... wanting those things gone. I will attempt to explain.

We had a test in my seminar class that was based on all the seminars given up till the point of the test. This means that the test would cover a total of 75 students seminar presentations, each about 10 minutes in duration. The test had 2 questions, each asking you to recall one entire seminar and all the facts within it. You did not know in advance which 2 it would be. When the test day came, nearly everyone in the class failed, as this was clearly an impossible task. The teacher had to curve the test. What makes this noteworthy is that I got 90% on this test. Rather than everyone else who studied the material, I went and memorized the serotonin system of the brain, created a model of it in my head, ranging from gross structures, all the way down to DNA protien synthesis in individual cells. When I went into the test I entered in a holographic world inside my head, and watched this model human brain, and simply observed what systems, what parts, I had to tweak to produce the relevant disorder in my model human I created. Not only did I end up producing almost all the information needed for the test this way, but I accidentilly named on fact that has actually not been studied yet by researchers, and therefore i should not of known.

To the people I have disclosed this to, the reaction is generally to call me some sort of protige or genius... But in a way im disturbed that my reaction to this was not any kind of pride of satisfaction with my skill level but rather fear and shame that people would think that I cheated, or that I might be found out that i couldnt do the work the way normal people did and instead fell back on the kinds of thinking I had repressed. I wasnt able to appreciate this. I wasnt able to accept the compliments. Oh sure i didnt make a scene of any sort, just kind of shrugged it off, told people it was a lucky guess. All this makes little sense even to me.

In a way I feel like a kid in an adults body, like im trying to figure out what im going to be in the world, but its too late to make the choice. Am I a good person? worthwhile? useful? I desparetly need to have more friends who can relate to this. If I dont make an effort to date soonish im going to forget how...

And to those who are to tell me to embrace a gift of anything of the sort... try to understand, I didnt choose any of this. It was forced on me. And it comes with a price. The more I give in to those parts of my mind, the further I get from everyone else. I get too much information, its like biting onto a live wire. It is taking its toll on me. I may figure out things nobody else can, but its not worth it. I'd rather be happy than smart.

I lay in my bed, waiting for the release from my daily binds of consciousness, the one natural state where I no longer need to think, where I enter a world where I need only react and that is always enough. This is an unusual night, as I have a headache, I think I am catching a cold, I have attempted to study, but failed, and have an exam the following morning. It is at this point that I have an idea. I could sleep. I could sleep now and wake up extremely early and do my work then. The exam is first thing in the morning, so I need only be functional until around noon. So I lay down, waiting for my release.

I have experienced something called sleep paralysis most of my life. This is a relatively unknown phenomenon, that is also relatively common. What happens is that dreams and the associated bodily changes of sleep continue to occur when outside of sleep. You wake up, you are conscious, you can hear everything around you, but are unable to move. Your brain has not turned back on muscle tone, a defense mechanism to keep us from hurting ourselves in our sleep. What is more is that dreams continue to occur. You may hallucinate, feeling like you are being moved, you can see lights, you can feel pressure or hands on your body, and if new this can be a frightening process to experience. Sometimes it happens as I am falling asleep. I feel like I am floating, disconnected from the bed. I commonly am jarred awake by the sensation of a sudden and extreme fall, clutching the mattress in a vain attempt to stop a fall through the mattress that is not actually happening.

This night is not a typical night. For the first time in my life, I experience my fall sensation but am neither woken by it, nor is it followed by a loss of any level of awareness, indeed I remain quite cognizant of what is happening. The sensation of falling persists for several seconds, while I can still see all around myself, and know that I am not actually moving. Now I feel something different... I feel the sheets above me and below me moving across my skin, softly at first, then faster.  Still I look and I am not moving, yet the sensation persists. However suddenly I see the distance between myself and the wall close. In the distance I hear a great storm, like what I would imagine what it would be like to be in a submarine during a hurricane, save for the mechanical sounds. Suddenly something gives. I rush into the wall, as it warps around me... I do not go "through" it such that I do it any damage, however I do not pass through it immaterially either, for I feel every grain of concrete, every flake of paint on my skin. I am moving faster, through earth, water, and rock.

I exit a floor, with a sensation I cannot easily describe. I can say it is most akin to being so drunk that the world is spinning, but without the mental disorientation, and on top of that with the sensation you get when you lay on a limb and it "falls asleep" but over my entire body. The sensation is disturbing, and thoroughly disorienting, but not without its fascination. I am no longer in my room. I am in the front entrance way of a house that is not my own, but not entirely unfamiliar. I try to grasp a wall but my hand passes through it, but still feeling it. I look at myself. I am a swirling mess of transparency, with some parts of my body solid, and others almost completely see through. I panic, trying to figure out if I am still asleep, searching the back of my mind for some vague sensation that I am still in my room. I must be dreaming right? But would I be asking these questions in a dream? I come to the conclusion that this must be a lucid dream, and as such i should be in full control of what happens next. I will myself forward, make my hand solid and clutch onto the railing using all my effort to maintain some semblance of corporeality. Upon moving up the stairs I recognize the house, but not the furniture. This is my house in Chalk river that I moved out of years ago. On the assumption that I am dreaming, I attempt to summon characters into the home but with no success. A blond woman, who i do not recognize rounds the corner in a night gown, and looks at me in shock briefly before I am again pulled... or more accurately fallen, backward into the floor only to reenter my room, briefly aware that i am back, before losing consciousness.

The following day I am discussing this experience with a friend, and when they mention the idea of astral projection, I laughed. As a joke I looked a map, only to become very cold, when I realized that the direction which I was pulled into the wall, was the exact direction of my old town in the Ottawa Valley.

Kyle

Current Music: Leave out all the rest- Linkin Park

I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone the other day, and I suddenly realized just how desperately I need something to change.

Right now, I have a friend whose room mate's brother had a schizophrenic break at a birthday party i was at about a week ago (and is currently being sought by the police under a court ordered treatment), I have a woman with schizophrenia and Generalized anxiety disorder and her mildly autistic son living in my house, my last year of university has been split into 2 years due to the university fucking a lot of stuff up and due to no fault of my own, my relationship with my family has become quite strained and I haven't felt like I belonged here for some time now, and finally i am growing more and more frustrated at having to wait for school to to finish in order to start my life.

I realized not to long ago that the idea of repression is not just something that other people do; that there were things going on around me, and things that I was feeling that I was entirely unaware of. For a long time I believed that everything at home was fine, that I just had a hard time because there were problems that I had that lingered from childhood, and that most of my problems either were due to that, or due to my sisters temper and the effect that it had on me. I have since begun to realize, now that she has moved out, that things run a lot deeper than that.

With her out of the house, things have not gotten more peaceful, and in fact have become more tense than ever. At first it became fights over small things that made no sense, and often went unaddressed as I have developed a rather unhealthy habit of checking out emotionally when people get angry, and refusing to yell back or talk to the person. Later, out of the blue, my parents bring over our 2 house guests, completely unprepared for what it would take to set them up with housing and mental health services here in Manitoba. A lot of the responsibility for making this work fell on me, as I realize now a lot of things do. I do not receive any credit for the work I do with them, and in fact am often the recipient of screaming fits when things that i have been involved in or even if i haven't do not go my parents way. More and more my parents regard my ever increasing contribution to the house as insignificant and make mention and vague threats of my having to leave.

At a point in my life where many of my friends regard me as one of the more responsible people that they know, and something of a rather drastic workaholic; I still live in a home where my parents are afraid to let me use the stove, or wash clothes (despite that i do most of the laundry). I know its cliche but I get no respect. Looking back, I never really have. I have always been viewed as the defective child, the one to be humored but not taken seriously. Even as an adolescent, when my family left the house, my sister (who is 2 years my junior) was left in charge.

I have finally started to accept that there is nothing I can really do that will change this. I can take all the amphetamine I want, to work for 2 or 3 days in a row (a habit I'm working up to with frighteningly little haste), and put down full time hours while a full time student, while a part time volunteer counselor, and then repaint part of the house for free, while teaching friends how to repaint their spaces, and I can leave a sock on the floor and I am right back to being the lazy son who cant do anything right.

What else is wrong is that I am starting to see all of this take its toll on me physically. Last month I ended up getting a flu bad enough that I went without eating for 2 weeks, but only took 2 days off work, one of which was due to weather conditions and not my illness. My knees have stopped improving. I do not dislocate on a dime but i still regularly, when crouched down and lifting any weight, slide my knee out of alignment as to get stuck until i can snap it all the way back in. I have aged 9 years in my appearance in the last 4. I have gone as long as a month at a time continuously so sleep deprived that i could not legally operate a motor vehicle. I feel withdrawal symptoms for the first time, when I don't take amphetamine.

Amidst all of this there is hope. I have a lot of friends. A lot of people whom I believe would look out for me if i could ever find myself able to ask them to. And with my last year of university split into 2 years, I may just be able to save enough money to get my own space, sooner than anybody realizes. I am at a point where I take an almost sick pleasure in knowing that one day I will leave here, probably on little or no notice at all, and be self sufficient, and in doing so absolutely shatter my family's world view. They are not at all prepared for the changes that this would create in the power dynamic between us. They think I will be like my sister and calling all the time and missing them. I am not like her. I could leave tomorrow and not talk to my family again for weeks at a time and find more than enough support and company among coworkers and close friends. For the first time my family would need to earn the privilege of my attention. If they disrespect me i could just escort them off my property, as I am sure I will need to do several times before they realize that things have changed. It will be hard on them, as they have no idea how much I do in the house, and the degree to which things would fall apart without me there, but for once I'm going to take some advice and remind myself...
This is not up to me to fix; I am not responsible for everyone I know, and it is up to them to make choices to help themselves.
Kyle