January 5, 2009

• Paranoid Delusions

  Deep down I am a very odd person. When I seem stranger than most people, it isn’t an act. Stating this is not an exercise in self-deprecation. Who cares about being odd? It’s just a statement of irrefutable fact. If you saw my inner mental life you would be quite shocked by the flow of my thoughts and would begin to understand how odd I really am. But you can’t read minds… or can you? Hmmm, I wonder.  Well just in case you can’t, I shall try to give you a glimpse into the odd workings of my brain. And perhaps for some of the many who have been harmed by some of the more odd behaviors that have arisen from my uniqueness this will serve if not as an apology, at least as an explanation.

  It started when I was very young. I was being watched.  I knew this for a certainty. And the things that were watching me they weren’t human. They were creatures that lived behind mirrors and in the small spaces between window panes. An extra-dimensional space in which they hid their layers. Of course me being all of five I didn’t know it was called an extra-dimensional space. I just knew their homes were back there and they were always watching me, observing me. I was the test subject.

  I was afraid of the dark because I knew they could see in the dark but I couldn’t. And I thought something might just decide to take me away and stick me in an everlasting darkness. Stuff me away and replace me with Kellen Version 2.0 since observation of Version 1.0 showed him to be a lacking specimen.

  After I saw the movie Gremlins I named them in my head Gremlins. Why? I have no idea. But I think they kinda looked like Gremlins, only meaner.  Their leader had spectacles I remember but there was like a power struggle in their ranks with regards to what to do with me. Their biggest rule was to never show themselves to me.

  So I would stare into mirrors and whisper to them “I know you’re there! I’ll stop you!”  But they would just keep jotting down notes. “Subject appears to be muttering to himself. Further observation is needed to determine the cause or reason.” Something like that.

  It got worse when I started to perceive all of my family and friends as being manipulated, controlled, and possibly even CREATED by the Gremlins. They were all not a real family. They existed just to manipulate me in order to test my capacities and strengths. They were there just to observe and record. I didn’t have my own will, everything I did was being controlled by others. I couldn’t seem to escape it. I never knew if any of my actions were my own or just the product of the Gremlins evil plan.

  This delusion lasted in the back of my head off and on for a long long time. Of course a huge part of me knew that this was just absurd and impossible and I was just being silly. The logical part of my mind could  rationally take in the evidence of my experiences and show that I had never once experienced any one thing that could serve as even partial evidence of the existence of these Gremlins.  But still I hated mirrors and windows. And even to this day I sometimes wonder in passing if there are eyes watching me in the night. Taking notes. Making observations. Preparing my next test.

  But the delusion was mostly wiped out of my head in and about late middle school and into High School. This was when I suffered from the verbal abuse of one of my fellow students. That only lasted a semester and I wholly and totally ignored it outwardly, showed no reaction and instead I studied the boy like a Gremlin would analyzing his motives and understanding how he came to be the abusive prick that he had become. And then I just felt sorry for him. There was something lacking in him that he felt the need to compensate for by taking it out on me. He needed to sort of play for the crowd like an actor or a comedian and he wanted to get a response out of me. It didn’t work, but at the same time I suspected he’d grow up just fine. He just wasn’t very interesting.

  After that though my second delusion started to take over. Suddenly I wasn’t just the test subject observed, I was the creator. Put it quite simply I began to think that I was only dreaming and all of everything and everyone was just a figment of my overactive imagination. Nothing that happened to me was real you see. Nothing. I, or rather, my mind was the only real thing in the Universe.

  In fact… the Universe wasn’t all that BIG either. Rather anything outside of my immediate perceptions didn’t even exist. It didn’t exist until I perceived it. Or rather to be more accurate I perceived it because I had just made it to exist just then and there. Everything outside of that was just imagined by me. That was why whenever I read history books the stories seems so familiar to me. It was like I knew what was going to happen all along. And indeed I did for as I was reading I was inventing that History right then and there. It didn’t exist until I imagined it. And in truth it hadn’t really happened. And in my day to day life everything was fairly simple and predictable and mundane. There were no surprises. Why should there be? I invented everything… absolutely everything. You existed only because of me.

  It got worse though when I started to contemplate the bad things in my life though. There was an obvious question that came up immediately: a basic quandary of philosophical logic. If I’m inventing everything, why would anything bad ever happen to me? Surely I would just invent my way to perfect happiness. I’d have tons of friends, the perfect family, be rich and on my way to fame and glory and have a good time every day. Why would I invent some torturous experience called High School? That wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever!

  So logic could only devise one route out of that paradox. The answer was simple. My mind was divided against itself. That is there was a part of me, a terrible self-destructive part that hated me. A “sub-conscious” me who was making all the bad things happen. A part of me that wasn’t in control of my day to day movements and choices but could effect how others interacted with me and what kinds of things happened to me.

  Then I realized after a while that this other part of me couldn’t actually hate me. I mean it COULD but I thought that was highly unlikely. That would mean it hated itself. And if it hated itself why wouldn’t it simply destroy itself. I felt no inclination toward suicide nor were even the sum total of all the bad and disappointing things in my life all that particularly bad. Indeed I could identify lives that were in the purview of my created universe whose lives were much worse than mine objectively speaking so why would my innner me create a reality that has examples of a worse life and not give thta life to me? If it HATED me it surely would make my life increasing progressively worse until I self-destruct.

  But then I saw it… The truth! The inner mind of me was like the Gremlins. It wasn’t created hardships and challenges because it hated me, rather it was trying to test me. It was challenging me and observing my reactions. Everything in the Universe I had created was a big giant Test. It all existed for my self-betterment. I had to rise to the occasion or fail trying. All the while the other me would be watching and observing and finding other opportunities to test me further and push me further. It would shake its head in disgust when I failed to be courageous or when I was lazy or childish. It would applaud when I exercised kindness or generosity or did something worthwhile with my life. Other Me was trying to make Us as good as we could be. But Other Me was ruthless and would not settle for less than perfection.

  So… I rebelled against other me. I failed the tests on purpose. I hated Other Me and his damn holier-than-thou judgmentalism. Who was he to watch and observe me?  And so I was locked in an epic war against myself. Me trying to seize the power of reality generation from the inner me whereas my inner me fought to make me behave in accordance to his will.  As part of this war I even revealed the whole idea that I was generating the entire Universe to all of my classmates knowing full well that Other Me didn’t have a plan to cover that unexpected turn of events. But Other Me was devious. He made my classmates all into skeptics and tested how I would react to their skepticism. It was all quite odd and very tiring. The battle was long indeed.

  Of course all along I knew all of this too was nonsense. Deep down I knew it was a product of my overactive imagination and my love of philosophy. Although it was logically possible that the Universe didn’t really exist and that I was only dreaming, that skeptical perspective is rather useless when trying to figure out what to actually do with yourself on a day to day basis. And even if it wasn’t, it would still be a rather unlikely scenario no matter how you turn the words about. Descartes was just being silly really. He should stick to his graphs and his coordinates and leave the philosophies to people who actually aren’t psychotic. But knowing this didn’t stop the idea from sticking with me for a long long time. And even to this day whenever something odd happens or a strange coincidence touches my life, I start to wonder “why did I create this scenario for myself?”  I still think Other Me is testing me.

  I guess over time I grew up and these kinds of fictions faded from the forefront of my mind, and a subtler form of delusion started to take over.  No longer did I think that I wasn’t real or that my life was subject to someone else’s whim. Neither did I feel that the Universe wasn’t in existence and that the people I met were mere figments of my imagination. Rather I came to accept that other people were there and were more or less on the same footing as me. People trying to find their own way through life’s trials and tribulations to find brief moments of happiness however they can.

  But my brain wouldn’t let well enough alone. It was during college that my third delusion started to take over. That was when I started to think that there were mind readers amongst us!

  Telepathy is a thing never really explored honestly in most fiction you know? If someone really could read your mind it would most likely freak you out, disturb you, make you feel violated and afraid. It would lead to paranoia and fear and a desire to close yourself off from the world to stop the invasion of your privacy. Perhaps not everyone is like this. Perhaps some people’s thoughts are so pure and consistent that they wouldn’t give a damn if people read their mind. But I learned during College that I’m not like that.  The idea that others might read my mind and know my deepest thoughts threw my sense of paranoia into overdrive.

  It wasn’t everyone though. I think if EVERYONE was a mind reader it would have made things much easier. I would simply have to accept that I was at a disadvantage from everyone else, that they can read minds and I can’t. It’s like having a handicap. And all I’d have to do is shutdown my darker thoughts altogether when around others. I could protect myself rather easily and although it would be rather annoying it wouldn’t make me all that paranoid.

  But no, my delusion was much more devious than that. In my fantasy, not everyone was a mind reader. Rather there was something like a 30% chance any given person I was interacting with was a mind reader. And here’s the thing that made it worst of all… those 30% of the people, didn’t even know they were mind readers! Rather they thought that picking up what other people were thinking was just a natural part of life. It was being read into their subconscious. And they thought of it as like their instincts. So I couldn’t really blame them or confront them on it. I couldn’t yell at them to “get out of my head!” even if I could identify who was or wasn’t a mind reader. Which of course I couldn’t.

  So all along through college whenever anyone would look at me funny or take an inexplicable disliking to me I would think “I wonder if that person is a mind reader?” Or “Perhaps she read one of my darker thoughts?” If ever anyone seemed to have a particular strong sense of empathy or understanding or predict what I was going to say before I said it, it would creep me out. I would wonder if my Professors could read my mind. My friends. My roommates. The strangers I would ride the shuttle with. Random people I would pass on the walk to class. I would want to hide. Escape. And I’d start to watch my thoughts, trying to suppress them, trying to think about nothing or anything pointless or trivial or distracting.

  But you know what? It’s really hard to try NOT to think about something. The more you try the more you end up thinking about it. So it was with me, the cynicism and cruelty and crudity in my inner mental life grew during those college years even as my shame and fear of it expanded. And then I might try testing people with whom I was in a conversation with. Twisting my thoughts along a different direction as my words to see if the person I was speaking with could catch the contradiction. Or just to see how they would react to a particularly dark or controversial thought.  But that almost never resulted in any kind of useful information. It only served to make me more paranoid. Thinking that the people with whom I was interacting might be the few who were clever enough and smart to hide their special skill from me. Or maybe they were just humoring me out of pity arisen from their understanding of my inner thought processes.

  The worst were always the thoughts and feelings that came unbidden to my mind. The thoughts that I never knew I was going to have until I had already had it. Thoughts that made me wonder “did anyone hear that?” It didn’t help that I actually DID have a habit of muttering to myself. I always have. And I do so unconsciously sometimes so someone might well overhear my mutterings and actually say something because they heard what I said aloud, but I would think they were reading my mind because I wouldn’t remember having said it since I hadn’t meant to say it at all.

  Of course I would go to sleep at night laughing at myself. How absurd I’m being! I would think. And I’d come up with all these reasons and explanations for why it couldn’t possibly be the case that there were mind readers out there or that even if there were why would they give a damn what *I* happened to be thinking? Surely my thoughts are as mundane as everyone else’s? And even my darkest thoughts can’t be particularly remarkably dark considering all the cruelty and depravity out there I have observed in the world. But still it would persist. The thought that I was being watched on the deepest level was unescapable.

  Well that delusion only lasted a few years, after college finally I think I had matured enough to drop my more fantastic delusions and adopt more realistic kind of fiction. My last major delusional framework was in fact triggered by a very concrete experience that actually happened. It wasn’t a figment of my imagination. At least I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t.

  I kept a Journal. Not often but every once in a while. My darkest thoughts. My craziest thoughts. Random stuff. Whatever was bothering me at the moment. Sometimes filled with absolute lies and crazy absurdities. Sometimes I wrote assuming it would be read. Other times I wroter terrified it might be read.  Sometimes I wrote notes to people. Sometimes I wrote notes to myself. Future me. Past me. Notes for people after I died. Thoughts about things that had happened to me. A lot were just random playing with words. Seeing what I could do with them. This was before I kept a blog, before I even knew what a blog was.

  A lot of entries I deleted right after I wrote them. Many I never finished or stopped in midsentence unable to finish what I was saying. And I can’t really remember any of them anymore. I have some still. I saved them. Together with a bunch of papers I wrote during college. But I haven’t kept a real Journal since College and I haven’t been able to bring myself to open any of them up and re-read them. Not after the incident.

  A part of me hopes the hard drive and CDs I burned them on have all gone bad by now and they are irretrievable. I don’t want to read them again even though I know I should.

  After College I began to accept that my inner mind was my own province and nobody could know it without my permission. But I began to think that everything else of mine was not so secure. I came to imagine that everyone was reading what I wrote watching and observing everything I created. Well not everyone, but my closest friends, my bosses, my coworkers, my family. Anyone who I would care might be spying on me was spying on me. The closer they were to me the more I would think they were. I assumed that the people I cared about knew what I was writing in blogs and journals, overheard my phone calls, listened in on my IM conversations or would go back and read my IM logs. I began to think I was watched all the time. Every private conversation I ever had I would think that somebody overheard.

  I used to think that my bosses on ever job I ever had knew every web page I visited not just when I was at work goofing off but maybe even when I was at home on my own time. I would assume that whenever I left my laptop unattended that whoever was there must have accessed it and read all my logs, my emails, my journals, checked my browsing history etc.  I assumed when I was at work that there was a spy program observing me and a camera in my office probably recording my every action. It doesn’t help that in my mind it would be so trivially easy to do. I could setup the program to watch somebody’s computer behaviors myself if I wanted to. It’s not particularly hard at all.

  But it didn’t bother me so much when I was at work. Bosses or coworkers overhearing, who cares? It bothered me when I was around my closest friends. And I couldn’t control my mind from fearing that they knew everything I was doing. The worst part was thinking that they were judging me. Hating me. Finding me lacking. And then pretending like they cared about me.

  This has been the hardest delusion to banish because it’s so realistic. So possible.  And beause it actually happened to me. It was triggered by a real event that I never did get over.

  And that’s why I don’t keep a journal anymore. For a long time I would always blank out my browsing history and keep no logs of my IM conversations. For a long time I would keep every computer I used locked down and password protected and try as hard as I could not to let it fall into the wrong hands. I remember a couple of occassions where I disconnected my hard drive and took it with me somewhere, so paranoid was I that someone could read it while I was gone and that some remnants of information might still be findable on it in spite of my attempts to keep it clean.

  But time passed and I hated this paranoid lifestyle. And I’ve been fighting it ever since. At first I started to make myself do things like keep my computer unpassword protected and not delete my chat logs. I tried to make myself trust the people I knew. But it was still hard and I was always afraid. And the very act of making it available made me all the more convinced I was being watched.  Eventually I started revealing more and more not hiding stuff, talking to people, even strangers about what I felt and what I thought and doing so in a manner that could be overheard, seen or spied on, just to convince myself that it wasn’t happening. I’ve been trying to be more honest. Trying ot be more direct. Trying to live in the reality of what’s hear and now and not within the fictions wandering through my mind.

  It’s never gone away though. Not completely. On some level I know it’s unlikely. Sure I might have been spied on once or twice. And sure there’s the accidental case of someone overhearing me. We all have to deal with that. But it isn’t most of the time. And mostly it doesn’t matter even if someone does overhear. It’s not like most people are judging me for it. Although I’ve surely said things that I am ashamed of or wished I could take back, it’s not like I’ve done or said anything particularly evil or condemnable. At worse my thoughts and choices have been a little mean or a violation of someone’s privacy or trust when I felt there was a need (for my own sake or the sake of others) or I thought it was for the greater good. It’s never been criminal or horrible or worthy of inspiring hatred. At least I hope not. So what does it matter if I am being watched? However unlikely. I know this. I’m not irrational. I’m not unreasonable. I’m just paranoid. 

  But it’s still there. Even now I wonder if my boss is watching me finish this Xanga entry I started over the weekend instead of doing my work. Even though I know it’s unlikely I can’t help but think it’s happening. And it doesn’t matter that I can still finish my work with plenty of time left over. It still bothers me. I’m still paranoid. A part of me still thinks I’m being watched and judged.

  And so that’s that. The four paranoid delusional frameworks that have driven my interactions with the world from the moment I began to start to become self aware to the very present day. I have no idea why I am this way. There’s no hidden trauma in my past that might have caused it. Maybe everyone has delusions but just isn’t willing to admit it? Or maybe I’ve just been so mentally bored all the time that I’ve had to invent a whole delusional idea landscape to occupy my mind.  I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way I am.

  This is the very first time I’ve ever shared them or talked about all of them with anyone. I think the fact that I can write about them indicates that I am starting to leave them all behind me. But I can’t imagine there ever being a time when there isn’t at least a tiny little bit of me that guards my thoughts and my choices, that wonders if the world around me is real, and that worries about what might be living behind the mirrors. And I can’t help but wonder what new delusion might come next to join them. Eh. It’s a life I guess.

  • 10:54 am
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