By the summer of 2016 my life had settled down to a gentle pace, and my beleaguered soul was re-adjusting to basic reality. I was out of work, but I had sorted out my financial and mental life very satisfactorily earlier in the year. I was now taking olanzapine and melatonin each and every night, and was sleeping well with far less troublesome dreams. I was working on a number of artistic works as I had plenty of time on my hands, and for some reason I wasn't getting any stress from the voices during this period. I wasn't smoking weed, I'd given up drink after a drunken fall the year before, so was living a pretty clean cut life. I was still a 20 cigs a day guy however, always been my main vice since starting in 1998. I cut my hair short, and shaved off my beard too. Kinda like laying a marker down. A fresh start.
Not all was rosy in the garden however; I was always a person who suffered from a degree of social anxiety, (this in many ways explains how in 1994 when I moved to London, I experimented with booze and smokes to ease myself a little.) and socially I was becoming more of a solitary figure. I just wasn't getting much out of social living during that summer. Much like previous significant summers, there was the Euro 2016 football championships to enjoy. I can perfectly recall where I was and what I was like by picturing any World Cup or Euro Cup championship since 1986, it's uncanny! It's like I have a sporting bookmark that gets a new impression every 2 years! Anyway I had a whale of a time that summer, cheering Wales on in the football. Financially I was living a frugal life, but in general for the first time in years I was happy. Lonesome, but content.
The weather was fine, I was painting, drawing, writing, while also recovering from a prolonged period of traumatic stress. I began that summer taking stock of my notes in my books and journals, creating the compendium of memories and reflections that have been my main resource in this thread. Before I'd heard of Jordan Peterson I'd already divided my journals into epochs;
1974-86 Childhood
1986-94 Teenage Kicks
1994-2004 Young Adulthood
2004-2016 Psychosis and Beyond
slowly I was putting all the pieces together to create a broader picture. That summer I really got things started in that respect, recovering all the memories that I could unearth and putting them into a recovery narrative that could account for over 40 years of living. Past Authoring is a fine art that requires commitment and dedication to succeed in. Thankfully I've been journalling now since 1994 so it's second nature now to go over old memories, experiences or sensations. Making sense of one's life trajectory in digestible epochs was invaluable for personal growth.
Also consolidating my knowledge and being via my art collection was worthy too. In having a vast selection of books, cds and dvds I had all my memories from the late 70s onwards on tap at this point, and for a while at least I wasn't suffering any symptoms of paranoid psychosis. It had taken 12 long years of chaos but I was finally on the mend. It's actually quite emotional reflecting on this period, a time where I retreated from society and into a physical reflection of my "Soul Chamber", that secret place I always held within. Well, glimpses at least. As always, this part of me is mercurial and difficult to figure out. For instance, I can go for months without a meaningful thought and then in 3 days a whole slew of memories tumble out of the old Box! I've learned to anticipate nothing, and always be flexible when approaching the unknown in one's mind and heart. One day I hope to have truly made sense of all this drama, but at this point in the summer of 2016, life was slowly getting better. Already I was making more sense in my written work, a sign that my mind and soul was ready to engage in accounting for all this chaos, finally.
I was still painting, and sold a few pictures that summer too. A few punchy poems were written also. I may share some of my work on this forum at some point. For now this written account of my recovery process is keeping me busy enough though. But yeah, the summer of 2016 was a great period where I finally found a bit of order amidst all the chaos. Within a year I'd be rechristened SlipNet as a new member of the forum (actually my 4th incarnation though!), and I once again set to work on understanding my machine, what floated my boat and what made me tick. A hefty task that I just knew would never end....
