Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax

The rain-bound weekend brought vile epiphanies. Little stories of my failures and my crimes, the times when I felt the blood boil. Old arguments and old confrontations blanked out my existence. My eyes would not see what was in front of me. The near-visions would be spawned by the slightest suggestions: a word in a book, an ad on a web page, a sentence in a conversation. They would cause me to shout out “Stop it! Stop it! I hate me!” And, I learned from my psychiatrist today, there is no pill I can take to end their reign of terror. These are flashbacks from many crimes and many horrors.

Crime is a relative term. I feel I must be punished for the stupid things I have said. Here I live in a world filled with charlatans who push their snake oil on the desperate, chief executives of insurance companies who skin their clients so they can give themselves salaries in the millions, and worse — but I feel that the cross is to be affixed to me. Then there is the rage — the demand of my spirit that those who hurt me in any way be punished. And behind that came the Final Guilt: that to feel angry was akin to an act of violence, the most abhorrent act I could possibly commit.

I do not have to be wholly the thrall of these emotions. I have learned to fight back and to affirm in myself that I have the right to fight back. When any of these overcome me I stop. Look. Look at the gray screen of the television set. The yellow-white flame bulbs of the chandelier. Boadicea with her nine grey stripes running down the back of her head. Drake lying in the blanket he expropriated from our bedroom. It is time to say to myself “Where are you? What time is it?” and face the reality that that which is haunting me is not here right now.

Some of my fellow bipolar sufferers don’t get this thing that happens. They suggest I get on anti-psychotics, but I am on these. I have had hallucinations and I have been paranoid. Neither is anything like the terrifying thoughts that cause me to stop where I am. You interact with a hallucination, treat it as part of the furniture. Flashbacks are a monster of their own and they can stop you cold.

To overcome them, I must reclaim my present. A member of one of my support groups suggested this: “Tell yourself that you are not as bad a person as you think you are.” I take comfort from that.

Good article that I read today: What’s wrong with positive thinking. Somebody finally said “Fuck you” to all those self-proclaimed experts who have only made me feel more depressed all these years — and backed it up with science.