Inside my head

When you'd open the back panel in my wardrobe, some dappled sunlight will enter the wardrobe, inviting you into this strange world on the other side. A worn path stretches out in front of you, it seems to lead through a forest.

Just follow the path for a while and soon enough you'll arrive at a clearing. The remains of a campfire are here and there are paths leading in several directions.
If you would go West, you'd reach the shore after a while, a sandy quiet beach awaits you there.
If you'd go East, you'll go deeper into the forest, where you can find beautiful and weird flowers in the various clearings and if you don't make too much noise you might even encounter some of the most interesting and strange creatures that roam this world.
If you would head South, you'll enter the mountain range after a while, where the forest is gradually replaced by pine trees and conifers. If you climb the first mountain, you'll have a breathtaking view of the forest and some of the clearings, in the distance you can even see the ocean.
If you'd head North, you'll reach the portal again, but you can walk around it and venture into the jungle beyond it. You can find even more exotic and strange flora and fauna there, you have to be very careful there, a lot of plants are toxic and some animals have venom that kill you within a moment, others can cause horrible pains. It's best not to go there unprotected.

When I first entered this world, there were no paths at all, throughout the years of venturing through this world I made the paths appear as a silent witness of my many explorations. At the first clearing you can see that my favourite route is to the East. The path to into the forest goes on for a while, past several clearings where you'll find new trails leading off in different directions. In one of those clearings you can find one of the most beautiful plants in this world, it looks like a crossbreed of a passion flower and orchids. The fruits it gives are almost fluorescent pink when ripe, very juicy and taste sweet with an interesting hint of spices. The animals you can encounter here aren't hostile, as long as you don't try to harm them. Some are even very friendly and curious. My favourite is the Catopuma Canis, which looks like a rather big cat -almost puma sized- but has a dog/wolf-like behaviour. There are several roaming the forest, but I mostly encounter a ginger one. When it gets to know you and you treat it right, it loves to play fetch (and other games). It even has a sense of humour, when you throw a fruit, it tries to snap it from the air. When the fruit has broken open and splattered its juice over the animals snout, you can spot the animal grinning when it comes back for another round. They are also good protectors, when I venture in the jungle I prefer to be accompanied by this magnificent animal.

Further away from the portal you can find even stranger creatures and plants. You don't find any dwellings here, this world is not inhabited by humans. The creatures living here respect nature and if you want to find where and how they live, you'll have to search, they don't reveal themselves as easy as some others. This forest is rather peaceful though, unlike the hostile jungle.

When you head for the jungle, you'll noticed that the forest gradually changes shape and the variety of plants and trees start to mix with the jungle ones. The further you go the thicker the growth. I don't go into the jungle very often, mostly when I'm angry. I have noticed that when I damage something there it regrows within a few days. So I don't feel guilty about cutting a path here. Despite its hostility, you can find some very interesting plants here. There is a plant that resembles ivy in the way it grows up against trees, the leaves are like hands, its 'fingers' having saw-teeth edges.The flowers of this one are big, round and velvet black, when it has finished blooming, the flower transforms into a star-shaped 'fruit' with at each point of the star a little ball. When it gets touched it launches seeds from these balls into every direction before falling off. As I mentioned before the animals here in the jungle are dangerous. There are critters roaming the ground with spikes on their backs, Mohican (Mohawk) style. When I had found one dead and examined the spikes, I noticed that these spikes are having a venom-sack, which gets injected if you'd step on it. There are also bigger animals here, sometimes I hear a strange roar in the distance, it frightens me, it sounds very big, so I've never checked it out. There is another one here that roars like a very big animal, but actually it's a cute little one. It prefers to hide amongst the roots of a tree that is often hollow, so when it roars, the sound gets amplified in the tree and makes it sound very dangerous. This little creature feeds itself with the nut-like fruit from a plant that carries tulip-like flowers. This animal is about the size of a rabbit, has cat-like ears, the snout of an squirrel and a bushy tail. It is very shy and hides quick when it hears strange noises. If you think you've seen one, it's best to go and sit somewhere nearby in utter silence. If you're lucky it comes out of hiding to look for food.

There is so much more to tell about this world, but unfortunately it is time again to pass through the portal back to this world.

What most people in my environment either seem to forget or just don't realize is that I've arrived here straight from the closed section of the mental hospital (I was there thanks to a (potential) violent episode). I left the hospital (and France) mid January under the impression that something was going to be arranged upon my arrival. Although I did suspect that the crisis intervention wouldn't be fast, I had the impression things would have gone a lot different than they did.

First of all, there was nothing available for my crisis. I was neither crazy enough, nor violent enough to be locked up again. So they suggested that I try to stay calm with medication, which did work, but only for a short while. Over the course of the month following my arrival, I had several talks, of which one with a psychiatrist and again I was diagnosed with DID (dissociative identity disorder). I got the advice for treatment on the 16th of February, I was going to hear something about a place soon.

That "soon" turned out to be last Tuesday, after calling and asking for an answer on a weekly basis. The big news was that I'll have to wait 6 months to be examined! And if that isn't enough, after that I probably have to wait for ONE year for a place! I also was advised to check out other options to see if the waiting list is shorter elsewhere. I did my research and so far nothing came up with a shorter waiting list, some identical, some even longer. When I asked what to do in the mean time, considering I'm not at all stable, I was told that I couldn't start anything, because they will close my case and I'm off the waiting list. I kept insisting that this is far from ideal and finally the person dealing with my case promised to look if there was a solution possible, which I will hear in two weeks time. To be complete, the last time I saw my case worker was on the 16th of February and so much has happened in between that I really NEED SOME support!

My chaos is getting worse and worse, I feel lonelier than ever, I feel abandoned by my partner (since February), I feel homeless (I'm not without a roof over my head, but nowhere is home any more) and my abilities to do things are 'flickering'. I was trying to write earlier, but it takes only one moment to lookup something and I end up lost in lots of other things. Any attempt to get back to what I was doing failed, so I had to postpone it. When I'm temporary interrupted with another language I'm even worse off, the whole context of what I was doing before is lost, unless I have evidence of what I was doing. My problematic sleep is adding to the cause of the problems, if I'm lucky I sleep 6 hours. More often it's only 4 in total. I don't sleep during the day, that would make it only worse, I tried.

Yesterday morning I was trying to watch an episode of a TV-series I like. I started watching around 8am, I watched the last 3 minutes at 12:30. I've been pausing it lots of times and went to do other things. For example, I paused it, went to make a coffee, got some thoughts about something and by the time I was back at my computer I went on with whatever I was thinking about. When that was finished I returned to the TV-series, only to watch for a few minutes. That's how my attention-span is working at the moment. I don't stay the same, I don't remember what that TV-series was about, I only know which one it was. The things I was doing in between I don't remember at all. I haven't been writing here, as far as I can tell. There were no posts, except the video and an interrupted attempt. I don't know who posted the video, it wasn't me. I'm not even sure what to think about it.

For the last few days I feel as if my world is falling apart. My memory of what has happened is more fragmented and without anything traceable I can't puzzle it back. The last remaining stable part was my (our) online presence, but that seems to break down too. I'm getting more and more depressed and start to do weird things. I'm very afraid of the things to come. I'm even more scared of how I'm going to deal with the 18 months to come. I know that once I'm in therapy, I'm likely having to go through hell and back several times. I'll be glad to have a breathing break in between. Therapies tend to be like that, you have to break down to put yourself back together. It's a bit like a broken bone that has been set wrong, after that has healed, it needs to be broken again to set it correctly. People who've experienced that also know that breaking that again for the re-set hurts a lot more... Anyway, I know that and that's not what I'm scared of, I sort of know what demons to expect. It's the emptiness before that scares me. Especially when I feel as I have been feeling for the past months. I also noticed a pattern, when I get scared I do research, to occupy my mind with something else. Unfortunately I switch too much to be able to get into it. Researching for a few minutes at a time is difficult, especially when note-taking isn't her strongest point. Which brings me to another annoying problem, I sabotage myself regularly. I try to keep bookmarks of what is interesting, but for some reason some disappear. Someone has also emptied the history of my browsers, which makes tracing back even more difficult.

So if you don't see me posting for a while, now you know why. (This post was written in 4 hours, of which most time was "doing other things" of which I don't remember much.)

Not Safe For Work

Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

Well, this didn't start right. I pressed the wrong key (Ctrl instead of Shift) and opened a new tab and now my inspirational thought is gone.

Fiona Apple - Never is a Promise

You'll never see the courage I know
Its colors' richness won't appear within your view
I'll never glow - the way that you glow
Your presence dominates the judgements made on you

But as the scenery grows, I see in different lights
The shades and shadows undulate in my perception
My feelings swell and stretch; I see from greater heights
I understand what I am still too proud to mention - to you

You'll say you understand, but You don't understand
You'll say you'd never give up seeing eye to eye
But never is a promise, and you can't afford to lie

You'll never touch - these things that I hold
The skin of my emotions lies beneath my own
You'll never feel the heat of this soul
My fever burns me deeper than I've ever shown - to you

You'll say, Don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems
You'll say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high
But never is a promise and you can't afford to lie

You'll never live the life that I live
I'll never live the life that wakes me in the night
You'll never hear the message I give
You'll say it looks as though I might give up this fight

But as the scenery grows, I see in different lights
The shades and shadows undulate in my perception
My feelings swell and stretch, I see from greater heights
I realize what I am now too smart to mention - to you

You'll say you understand, you'll never understand
I'll say I'll never wake up knowing how or why
I don't know what to believe in, you don't know who I am
You'll say I need appeasing when I start to cry
But never is a promise and I'll never need a lie

My never-ending search for finding out more on how *I/we* work has lead me to a consumer focused EEG application. I'm not even sure how I ended up on the clip on YouTube below, but that started an interesting thought that this could be a way to learn more about which parts of the brain are active for which personalities.
Research has already shown that with the aid of MRI scans it is possible to see the switches happening. However this requires the person with DID to be able to switch on command and preferably between rather different personas/alters (as an example the following were mentioned: the alter that is in front most of the time when interacting with the world, a very traumatized alter, a child alter and probably more). The cost for such a scan are too high and the knowledge about DID is too limited to use it currently for any other purpose than research. Besides, the 'patients' that can be used for this research are required to have full control. Which makes it rather lousy as a diagnostic tool.

I've had a keen interest in how my brain works for many years, when the first D-I-Y EEG equipment was posted on the internet I started to wonder if I could do something with it. Lacking the skills to assemble such a piece of equipment and lacking programming skills, I decided to wait. Now the time has come that we might have this technology within reach, and even more than that. The interesting part for me could be the use of this new technology for monitoring brain activity as we try to switch from one to another. And that's just the beginning...

Watch and be amazed!



Check out the site of Emotiv Systems. Currently not yet available in Europe, but coming soon. Anybody out there willing to sponsor me? :)

Thanks to everyone who keeps reading my weird and wonderful stuff. This morning the counter reached 1000 when I peeked on here. On to the next big number. :)

The past two nights were great, I slept 'normal' for a change. No weird dreams, no talking in my head, no music in my head, all is quiet. I'd almost say that I feel 'normal', except that the world doesn't seem real. On top of that, writing seems very difficult. I have to squeeze out everything, it doesn't really flow as it normally does.

The world feels like I'm still dreaming, almost as if I'm watching a film. I don't feel I'm actually participating in it, I'm feeling detached. An hour and a half have passed since I started to write this, I've been 'zoning out' lots of times in between.

I wish I could write, it's frustrating to have to force everything out.

Cuteness level: 100%
Bonus points for added flower. :)

Nothing personal, Google... Should we be worried now?

Update: Google says 'Sorry'.

Now that's quite something else! Amazing!

I didn't know the comment forms were broken, until today. It appears that the template didn't understood the embedded form stuff. So now you'll get a proper page (with openId options and all that) for entering comments. Sorry!

Sleeping has been a disaster lately. During past few weeks I noticed my nights I slept less every night. Last night I've been lying in my bed awake all night, the night before I managed to catch nearly 2 hours. At first I went out of bed, back to my pc, whenever I couldn't sleep. The last few nights I decided not to, since my body needs its rest too. Instead I stayed in bed and tried to rest as much as I could.

I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and the heir
of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

There's a club if you'd like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
well, when exactly do you mean?
see I've already waited too long
and all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does