i was so fucked up when i came out of str8 that i didn't know how to relate to the outside world. i couldn't smile at strangers, couldn't understand jokes, couldn't follow simple directions and couldn't hold a job. For over 2 years of my life my world had been str8. When i was finally released i had no clue who i was, what to do or how to act. i had no reference points. i had no personality, no sense of self. My personality had been destroyed. i was left with some pseudo-personality which was foreign to me. Str8 made me so sick.
During my time in str8 i learned to suppress my "real self". There were certain parts of my "real self" that i hid away, out of sight of staff and the group. In str8 i was forced to adopt a pseudo-personality as a survival tactic. There were times when i misbehaved and as long as i misbehaved i was expressing my "real self" but eventually and by degrees i surrendered my autonomy, my integrity. So over time and within that controlled environment i adopted the beliefs of the cult. i was brainwashed(and in some ways may still be). But there was always a little part of me that remained free. i had secrets that i guarded. Past incidents that i never mentioned, flirtations with female 5th phasers that i never told anyone about. i filled out my permissions for school in such an ambiguous way that i was able to get away from school for hours at a time and no one knew where i was. At school i broke lots of rules; talked to cop-outs and withdrawls. In other words i was full of shit my whole program. i never even thought about it like that 'till jus' now !!
it was like i was livin' a double life. i repressed all my natural spontaneity. i developed such an anxiety about bein' caught that i learned to analyze my emotions before they could be expressed on my face(i think the psychologists call that "low effect"). i worried constantly that some symptom of my dishonesty would slip out. My life was just a lie. Insane.
i suppressed my "real self" so deeply that when i finally did get out of str8 i was completely lost in the world. i was even lost to myself. Everything, it seemed was just a lie. i was incapable of trustin' anyone.
i did a ton of drugs: L.S.D[which was full of strichnine(sp?)], crack, P.C.P, whatever was around i did in an attempt to recover from the brainwash, my logic bein' that if i was brainwashed not to do drugs then drugs would somehow cure me of the "wash". Really i jus' compounded my confusion at the time.
i couldn't figure out how to relate to anyone who hadn't been in str8. i had nothin' to base any desicions on. i was so lost, so confused that out of some desperate necessity i adopted yet another personality. Slowly and by degrees i adopted this kind of a "belligerent red-neck drunken" personality. A kind of prosthetic soul to replace the one i had lost in str8. It was like this character that i could slip into. It was my desperately sick and diseased attempt to try and find a way to somehow relate to the world again; to try to respond to a joke, to understand the context of some conversation, to be able to smile at a stranger, to have some reference point in life by which to make a desicion. Over the course of about 10 months this character came to dominate my personality, which in my vulnerable mental state was easy for it to do.
The scariest moment of my life was the moment of realization that came to me about 18 months out of str8 as i stood alone on the balcony of my apartment and acknowledged to myself that i was not alone, but had developed more than one personality. As i stood there alone i realized that my "real self" was tryin' to resolve some argument with this "red-neck" personality which i had developed as a form of protection. i distinctly remember the feelin' of standin' there alone but with 2 different people, each inside of me !! i was terrified.
From that night on i distanced myself from that "red-neck" personality. i began the long search to truly recover my health; to find myself. i hitch hiked all around the country and lived as a transient for years in an attempt to heal my own wounds. In time i came to understand all this as the dynamics of my own ego and my sufferin' is far less now than it was.
Str8 really, really fucked me up. Does anyone know what i mean ?? Has anyone else ever experienced this disease ?? Can anyone relate to havin' so much anxiety ?? So much confusion and pain ??
Fuck str8. Fuck all authority. [ This Message was edited by: starry-eyed pirate on 2005-08-29 22:09 ][ This Message was edited by: starry-eyed pirate on 2005-08-29 22:18 ]