h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello Everybody! Thank you Krispy Kreme for inviting me.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Willem van der Merwe, I'm a 31-year old guy and I live in South Africa. Right now I'm suffering from a disorder called Paranoid Schizophrenia. It's the same sort of thing that affected John Forbes Nash as you might have seen in the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' starring Russel Crowe. It is probably so that I have a genetic predisposition towards this condition but I also believe that the condition has been precipitated by stuff that happened to me and that I did in my past. At any rate the paranoid schizophrenia blends in quite well with the various other traumas and problems I have by now and these go back to my childhood, at least to my birth if not even prior to that.

Here are a few things.

In 1992 I attempted suicide by a massive overdose of prescription drugs. I was in hospital for a few days and it took me many months to fully recover. It was the most intense pain I ever experienced and it lasted for months without interruption.

But what is it that drove me to that? I know, but it's a long story.

I again attempted suicide in 2001 shortly after the WTC plane-bomb attacks. And one more time since that, though this attempt was not so serious. It still could have resulted in my death.

I think about suicide a lot. I've self-injured quite a few times, and self-injury for me is a substitute for suicide. In other words, I really want to commit suicide, but instead I self-injure as a temporary substitute. Is that good or bad?

I experience the society, the world, I live in, as a world of death and destruction and lies and deceit and overwhelming pain and fear and despair. Why is that? I know, but it's a long story.

My thoughts are uncontrollably filled with terrible violence and feelings of extreme horror, revulsion and terror. Really, this is *beyond beyond*. Where does that come from?

I'm now 31 years old. I don't yet know why I was put upon this earth. I don't really have a job, but I keep myself busy by drawing and painting and by cultivating plants. I feel though as if I am under sentence of death and I'm just whiling away the time until it's time for my execution. I have not yet had anything remotely resembling a romantic relationship. I haven't yet kissed a girl romantically, even. And yet I dream of having a family one day, and being a good husband and father. But can I first just become an OK person?

I am improving. The last time I was in a mental institution was about two years ago and since then things have gone quite well for me. I think I'm becoming better. I actually am happy most of the time, but usually late at night the feelings of horror and terror ... the certainty that something terrible beyond words is going to happen ... and a kind of deep, deep, all-pervading psychological pain and torment ... return.

Well, now I am here in this Survivor's group. I'd like here to talk a bit about my stuff, and listen to other people's stuff, and be supportive as I can.

Having met the feller, and spent a most enjoyable time with him and his parents in RSA, I don't need to find complex arguments to justify his existence, I've met him and found him valuable as a friend and as an artist.

As far as *why you are here*, Will, forgive me for sounding reductionist, but you're here because your parents and that's all the justification you'll ever need. Everything else is yours, and tentatively has been protected by the constitution of the United Nations (something which I appreciate is less reinforced in the breech than in the observance, but nevertheless, I think you need to remember this
in times of doubt and difficulty)

He's also an ecologist of some merit, with a line in southern African indigenous plant species, and an excellent tour guide for nature reserves. I have no doubt that he could do for the art world, or the environment or both, as much if not more as JF Nash did for Mathematics.

Where relationships are concerned, it's just one of those things which you don't think you'll ever cope with until someone comes along to ensure that you do. And I've no doubt that someone close will meet you and appreciate how beautiful *your* mind and soul is, and want to nurture them as you do the land around you. Many already do, some have the art to prove it. But you need to believe it now.

Well, Krispy Kreme, it was nice meeting you too! I hope this idea takes off and is of some use.

Just a note, I happen to believe in a force and a purpose a bit bigger than the United Nations! At least, I hope it.

I think the only reason we are here is to exist and procreate, anything else is a bonus! It is part of the human condition that we want more, whereas the animals and plants just do what they do. As a personal ambition, I decided I am here to enjoy life, which is sometimes difficult when you focus on what is happening in the world. I get full of anger when I see children being executed, when I first learnt the story of Ken Saro Wiwa, etc etc. But would the dead feel any better knowing we torture ourselves over the unfairness of the world? I think we owe it to them to live for them, and love for them and to enjoy life to its fullest, cause only some people in the world even get that chance.

Yes my father spent a lot of my childhood sexually abusing me, but I am alive, I wasn't killed, or raped by strangers, or my family killed in front of me, so I guess I really have a lot to be thankful for.

I think we have a responsibility to survive, its sometimes a heavy one, but its a good reason to live for.

Well thats my thing for today, I don't know what it is like to be chemically imbalanced, that sounds heavy. I know I get very depressed but I also get very happy, I am lucky I get the happys!

Good luck Willem!

Hi Willem,

I have to agree with Chris. You are an exceptional artist. Assuming you put as much into your other pursuits as you do into your art, you will find your niche.

We are all products of our upbringing. I believe part of our purpose in life is to make the world better for the generations to come. I don’t think that we are destined to repeat the mistakes of our parents. At least, I hope we aren’t.

As I have said in other threads, I am just now coming to realize how mixed up I am. I really thought I was normal!*!*! My inner self knew, it just wasn’t sharing.

Oh, and a quick comment on romantic relationships … I was 39 before I meet my soulmate. I was married to ‘the - boy - next – door’ for 18 years at that time (I had dated him for 8 years prior t getting married) and had the warped idea that marriage was forever. There was no love or romance in that relationship, only abuse.

I have now been married to my soulmate for almost 12 years. Is it a ‘romantic’ relationship? Not really. But it is a relationship filled with genuine love and caring.

When you find your solemate, romantic or not, you will know it.

It is ‘Bashert’ … meant to be.

But until then, we’re here for you.

Hi, Willem! It's good to meet you.

I was lucky enough, through accident of birth, to have spent my life in a part of the world where physical abuse and psychological torture are generally seen as unacceptable. I can't imagine what it must have been like to live with the kind of fear and despair you have.

When you say that you think you self-abuse as a sort of replacement for suicide, I believe I understand. I've attempted suicide twice, once by cutting my wrist- a half-hearted attempt at best, and once by ingesting sterno (diethylene glycol)... still have renal complications from that. Some years ago, I'd developed my own way of 'cutting' using straight pins. It doesn't leave scars, so 'well-meaning' people are less likely to intervene. Not to mention the other more subtle ways there are to abuse onesself, using alcohol, drugs, whatever. I don't know if self-abuse is good, but I guess it's better than the alternative.

I can't think of anything else productive to say right now, except to echo what everyone else has said about why we're here. I've been asking myself that same question ever since I survived the car wreck that killed my husband. Whether it be part of some great plan, or just random chance, what matters is not how or why we came to be here, but what we do with the time we have. Sounds to me like you're doing quite well all things considered, and are far more than just an 'okay' person. I wish you all the best! If you need to talk about things, I'll be here to listen.

Thanks for all the encouraging words, Chris, Kaz, Richenda, and Psychocandy. I hope that here I can get to know you all much better and give you all some serious support with your own 'stuff'.
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Really, I want to say this ... my life hasn't been that bad although there have been traumas. There has been incredible amounts of fantastic, wonderful things that I have seen and experienced. I hope that I can share some of that as well. And I have so far managed to cope with my problems ... I'm still here, after all. I could have been dead, but I'm not. There are things that I really have a hard time with, things that still plague my mind and taint my happiness, but I hope I'm going to overcome them.
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Why am I here? Why are we here? I cannot say why other people are here, but I cannot get rid of the feeling that I am here, personally, to do something very important, and I have to find out what it is. I agree with Richenda that we are here to help that the world would be a bit better for future generations. At the very least, to try and make sure that life for our children and their children and grandchildren would not be a living hell. In the world right now, for many if not most people, life is a living hell, and I just think it doesn't have to be that way. But anyways, I would personally like to do something to make it a bit less of a living hell for at least a few people. I also agree that we shouldn't repeat the mistakes of our parents and the authority figures and institutions that have shaped our lives and thoughts and have often made a total mess of things because of ignorance, insensitivity, irresponsibility or even outright malice.
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As for what you say, Kaz, I agree that we should recognise that mere 'survival' is already something of great value. People who are actually alive right now are very privileged because the majority of people are dead. And as for procreation ... if I can get to actually procreate, it would be like heaven. And if I can get to procreate, I might as well do lots and lots of other great things too!
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As for what you say, Psychocandy ... basically, I am certain that self-injury, in itself, is not a good thing. It is only 'relatively better' than suicide, when it can be a substitute for it ... it is certainly better to just cut yourself than to commit suicide. But it would be best of all if you had no desire for suicide, or for self-injuring. The kind of thoughts and feelings that drive me to contemplation of suicide and self-injury are extremely unpleasant. I would totally prefer to never think or feel that way. As it is, I do try and resist impulses to self-injure. The last time I self-injured was more than a year ago, and the scars have not yet faded. But anyways ... I am trying many things to keep me from self-injury or attempting suicide. I have committed myself to an ultra-healthy lifestyle. I stopped drinking alcohol, or using any other kind of drug, not even caffeine ... also I stopped eating meat and I don't eat 'processed' foods, candies, junk foods, except very infrequently ... I drink only clean water ... I also train with weights and I'm trying to build up my body. These things have worked in that I am now a very physically-healthy and robust individual. So basically I take great care of my body and this makes it very hard for me to contemplate harming my body, or even killing it. So I won't self-injure very easily. I mean I just need to think about all the care I'm trying to take of myself, of my health, of my wellbeing, and it makes thoughts of self-injury very hard to stomach. Thoughts of suicide even harder. I have all these goals for what I still wish to achieve ... like competing in drug-free bodybuilding and powerlifting contests ... and if I attempt suicide and perhaps not succeed, but only succeed in seriously damaging myself, all these goals go out the window. And I have lots of other goals and projects as well. All these things are attempts to ground myself in reality, in the concrete wellbeing of my body and mind here and now. So you can imagine all of this serves as serious disincentives to suicide and self-injury. But that could also perhaps make you understand just how extremely badly it must go with me that I still do quite regularly contemplate suicide, and occasionally attempt it, or self-injure. But like I said, the last time was over a year ago and I am wholly committed to never doing it again.

Hi everyone, hope you are all feeling well.

Willem, I was impressed by your discipline, eating and drinking well and staying fit and strong can only be very good things. Keep that up!

As for procreation, its not something I will ever do!

However I have just had an epiphany of sorts, its time to leave the past behind. Time for a new begining. I have certainly been more cheerful for the past week, and life has subsequently been more enjoyable. I'll let you know if it lasts!

I'm impressed, too, Willem! I'm a healthy eater for the most part as well, sticking mainly to fresh and organic foods and stuff. I rarely eat meat, I'd say once or twice a month, working towards not at all. Except fish and seafood, I love it too much to give it up!

You're absolutely right, if you're taking care of yourself and feeling good physically, it's easier to feel good and look after yourself in other ways as well. My current problem is lack of self-control when it comes to my alcohol intake... I do tend to drink to excess. Need to work on that a bit.

I haven't ruled out procreation just yet... although I don't exactly have to worry about it just now. If and when I do, I intend to create an environment of love and acceptance for any child(ren) I have.




I haven't self-injured in a few years, except for the tendency to excessive drinking, and all the subsequent dramas. I am, however, extremely accident-prone, and have had more than one therapist express concern that it may be an unconscious form of self-abuse. I'm not sure I really understand that theory, but it's something I'll have to explore if and when I find a new therapist.

When I feel the urge to self-abuse (and I still do, quite frequently at times), I also try to do something physical, to vent the frustration and direct some of the anger outward. I can't see myself lifting weights or anything, but I'm really interested in fencing and kickboxing and other martial arts. Do you think that learning and getting involved in one or more of these activities would be of benefit to me? It's got to be better than boxing with plate glass like I did a few weeks ago... the plate glass won.




Kaz, I'm glad to hear you've been more cheerful and enjoying yourself more this past week! I hope it continues for you. I've been trying to focus on all the things I have to be happy about, and it makes dealing with the unpleasant stuff a lot easier!

Willem,

Martial arts is a wonderful way to get out frustrations. My son used to punch out walls and doors on a regular basis. He is now up to red belt in tae kwon do and manages to turn his frustrations and need to strick out on a more appropriate target (ie. his kick bag).

Not beinging physically inclined myself, I have a children's bop bag that I take out my frustrations on. The other thing that works well for me is picking up some inexpensive plates and glassware and smashing them in the trash. Works wonders when you feel the need to vent.

Watch out for plate glass ... it always wins.

Hope you're ok.

Richenda, I'm doing OK after my run-in with the plate glass. Had a couple stitches, but nothing serious. That'll teach me to hit something soft next time... although thanks to a concerned friend actually 'triggering' me, I wasn't really aware of what I was doing at the time...

While I'd still like to look into Tae Kwon Do or kickboxing, I like your idea of having a bop bag. I've got to get myself one of those, or a punching bag and some gloves. Sounds like it'd work wonders! I think I'm too accident-prone to mess with breaking dishes, though.

Oops should have been addressed to P-Candy

Martial arts is a wonderful way to get out frustrations. etc.

I too am an accident waiting to happen. I have been known to trip over a line on the sidewalk

Hello everybody! Getting involved in some form of regular physical activity is a great thing for many reasons, not just to get out frustration! But it does work for the frustration and anger, certainly. I don't know what a bop bag is but a punching bag is great. In Denmar (psychiatric clinic where I spent some time) I had a physical routine that helped me get through the day and that meant a lot to me. It was a great place ... they had beautiful gardens with lots of trees, a basketball court, a punching bag, a pit of sand with a net for volleyball, and a network of footpaths. What I did was after waking up I got *under* my bed (it was a high bed with a heavy iron frame) and did pushups with it on my back! Then I went out and did chinups from the branch of a tree. Then I went for a run covering the entire road network ... then I went for breakfast. Later through the day I might go shoot some hoops (we borrowed the ball from the art & crafts room with a R50 deposit) and go punch and kick the bag. The bag was popular among the inmates. Myself and my roommate Gareth once went and gave some of the others boxing lessons, including the girls. There was one really tough-looking girl that was always rather angry and cursing and she really got into the punching and for once she seemed relaxed and happy! We had some boxing gloves and with it Gareth told her punches and jabs and afterwards I let her punch me in the midsection as hard as she could. Went OK except for the last punch which missed my abs and hit me in the solar plexus! Ouch!
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But anyways, a punching bag would help. And also martial arts would be excellent. Martial arts are not merely physical disciplines, they involve much mental discipline as well. In fact it should be something very relaxing. You'll find your mind goes into a state of peace. Inner peace is a very valuable side effect of regular martial arts training. It will also help with impulse control. For me it's the same with weight training though I know this is not for everybody. But when I work very hard, physically, I feel calm and in control of things. It is also great to have a daily and weekly physical routine ... it's another way of grounding yourself in reality.

I'd heard that the martial arts are very good for relaxation, which is a big part of the reason I'm interested. I'd made the mistake of beginning with chakra meditation, and found that I can't reach the calm, meditative state because I'm always mentally 'on guard', if that makes any sense. Perhaps finding something a bit more physical would help.

Earlier this afternoon I called a friend to see if she wanted to head to the gym so I could have a go at a punching bag for a while, and she thought it was hilarious, as I'm generally a very timid, compliant (i.e., passive-aggressive? ) sort of person...

I'd also like to particpate because I believe I'd become more fit physically. Expending more energy would serve not only as a way to blow off steam and channel some of my aggravation outward, but it'd be sure to increase my energy levels, so maybe I wouldn't feel run-down and lethargic as often. And physical routines make me very happy- I always feel secure and in control when I'm following some sort of routine. Although I must admit I could never attain the level you're at Willem, that's some regimen you had going there!

Anyway, sorry I steered this thread so far off topic. I have habit of getting off on tangents to the actual coversation... sometimes my mind wanders off so far, it doesn't come back.

Bop bags are basically punching bags for children. They are filled with air and weighed on the bottom. When they are hit, they bounce back up.

Thanks for the explanation Richenda ... I don't think we have 'bop bags' here in SA.

Psychocandy, don't worry about being off topic or not ... there isn't really a 'topic' here so we can drift whichever way we please.

Anyways I'm glad to hear your gym has a punching bag. Ours used to but it's been taken down. I'm thinking of getting one to use here at home.

With Martial Arts I just want to say a few more things. There are various kinds and some are more active and aggressive while some are more passive. If you're interested you might read a few library books first to give you an idea what the various disciplines are like. And then it will also depend on what sort of 'teacher' you have, and for what goal this teacher teaches the art. It would be great if you could get someone who understands why you're doing it and who can ensure you that it would help you for your purposes. Generally it should not be 'competitive' and not too hard. It would be great also if there is some application to 'self defense' because not all martial arts are actually that good as practical self defense methods. I think for self defense Taekwondo is a good sort of martial art but the best form of self defense is learning to avoid dangerous situations! But being in shape and knowing a few punches & kicks and also a few simpler self defense techniques including knowing a few things about human psychology in 'combat situations' can be a good thing in case you ever find yourself in a dangerous situation. But to get back to 'martial arts' ... to summarise: a simple and easy kind of martial art will help with getting and staying in shape; with getting rid of feelings of anger and frustration; with attaining a calm and focused mind; with impulse control; with discipline for life; with 'grounding' yourself in reality. If you master it you will also get a feeling of accomplishment which I think is very important and helpful. It's something to consider.

But just a punching bag will also help with some of those things!

Yoga and meditation can also serve some of these purposes ... personally I like something much more strenuous and active. I would say that I do 'meditate' but not in the Eastern fashions ... I don't like 'emptying' my mind, I don't think I could even do that, but I do work on 'calming' my mind with relaxation techniques and I spend quite a lot of time each day in contemplation.

Right, so here is more detail. This is about my suicide attempt in 1992. This was more or less the pivotal point of my life and also the most serious 'teauma' I've survived. The fact that I inflicted this trauma on myself doesn't make it any less traumatic. But here's some of what led up to it... there's a huge history preceding it, though, that I'm not telling now.
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In 1992 I was at University ... Pretoria University, or 'Tukkies' as it is popularly called. I was having serious problems at university, and these problems are quite complicated. But the bottom line was this ... at Pretoria University, around the middle of 1992, I was becoming seriously insane. Not that I've been especially sane up till then. There were serious things wrong with me for all my life up till then and one very serious aspect that neither I nor anyone else was aware of was this: I was largely existing in a state of 'depersonalisation'. The dictionary describes this as 'a psychological state in which somebody loses a sense of personal identity and of the reality of the world' ... and that's precisely it. I drifted in and out of conditions of greater and lesser depersonalisation ... but gradually I was becoming more and more 'lost and disconnected'. I literally at times did not have a 'self' ... there was no 'myself', no 'Willem', just a vague sense of something vague. Also 'reality' started disappearing for me. It became like a fog or like a huge mixture of possibilities, potentialities, or different likely worlds or realities. I did not know up from down. I was lost. I had lost myself and the world.
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The thing is that up till then I had never really formed a notion of 'myself' at all. I was in various ways so conditioned to believe that I did not have the right to *be* a self. I did not have the right to have any individual ideas or opinions or values or goals. I was conditioned to live and breathe only for the 'cause', whatever the cause was. Up till then the 'cause' had been the Liberation and Advancement of the Afrikaner People as envisioned by Right-Wing Afrikaner groups ... and fighting against the enemies of the 'Afrikaner', mostly the 'Right-Wing Afrikaner' ... and for the Church in which I was. I'll talk about the Church later. But by 1992 the 'cause' for which I had up till then lived was lost. There was no more cause. I therefore had no more purpose. I couldn't live just for my own sake ... I had not the faintest idea that I could ever live just for my own sake, I could only live for a cause, for some other sake. I could only envisage myself as being part of a 'cause'. Without a cause, there was no 'me'. There was no point in my individual existence. In fact I had no real concept of my own individual existence. I had no concept of my own individuality. To myself, I hardly existed at all.
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And there I was at *university* having to study but I had no idea why! Why was I studying? I was studying physics, chemistry, mathematics ... why? For what 'cause'? To be a physicist? Or a mathematician? What kinda 'cause' was that? To serve the new SA government ... the people I had up till now considered my 'enemies'? For who was I to be a physicist or a mathematician? You see, I had no idea. There was no 'cause' for which I needed to be at university. I decided I had to be there for the sake of my parents because they wanted me to be there. I had a vague sense of 'physics' and of 'mathematics' as subjects ... the subjects came to represent some sort of reality for me. As long as I could conceive of some sort of 'thing' called 'physics' I had some kind of hold on reality.
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I had these holds on reality and some others but I kept getting lost. I kept getting lost between different realities. There was the reality of the subject of physics that I was studying and I was reading up on it regularly in the Uni reading room and the library ... but I was also getting sidetracked because I always had a love of animals and nature and in the library I kept drifting over to the sections dealing with animals and plants and reading books I weren't supposed to be reading ... and I kept getting sidetracked into the 'social life' of the hostel where I stayed ... and I kept getting sidetracked because of my love of art and music ... and then I was trying to stay connected with the church as well but the church in Pretoria was so different from the church in Pietersburg ... and there was my room, that I had to keep neat, and my meals that I had to eat, and amidst all these different worlds and realities I had absolutely no self, no centre, to hold everything together. These were just various disconnected realities and there was no 'I' to be a link between them. There were 'meals' ... there was no 'I' who was eating these meals. There were bike rides to the University and to the city ... there was no 'I' who was riding the bike. There were lectures ... there was no 'I' who was attending these lectures. There were shopping centres and CD's ... there was no 'I' going to these shopping centres to buy CD's though there must have been some sort of 'I' to select which CD's to buy, some source of a taste for a certain kind of music ... possibly that was when I was at my most 'real', when I was buying music and selecting a certain kind of music because that was just about the only kind of individual decision I ever made. But there was more the sense of 'a certain kind of taste for music' than a sense of an 'I' which possessed this sort of taste.
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My first year at University, 1991, went fairly well in that I made it through it. But the second year, 1992, did not go so well. I was starting to seriously 'disintegrate'. I started eating erratically. I sometimes went without food for days. I was starting to become slovenly about my appearance ... wearing the same clothes for days, wearing them to bed and to classes. I stopped cleaning my room regularly and the 'dust bunnies' bred and grew under my bed. I stopped attending my lectures regularly ... some days I just slept as late as I wanted to and stayed in my room. My social life disintegrated ... I stopped seeing and visiting my friends, who were living in the same hostel, regularly. I had also picked up a nasty drinking habit. Not that I drank a great deal, because I did not have enough money to buy lots of alcohol. But whenever I did have some money to spend on alcohol, I went for broke. I just bought the strongest and cheapest stuff I could find and drank it as fast as I could. At first I drank along with friends, we were 'partying' and I tried to get as drunk as I could and a few times my friends had to take me back to my room and put me to bed. I usually kept on drinking until I passed out. Later I just stayed in my room and drank. There was a time I puked all over my room and passed out lying on the floor in my puke with the door open and later I heard that some girls had walked by and seen me lying there. I also think I was half naked. I woke up the next day in the puke and not knowing what happened. What I felt the worst about was that I had puked all over a very nice book on cosmology that I had borrowed from a friend. I just couldn't handle that.
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You could see that there was still some sense of an 'I', of a 'self' there, but it was very tenuous, and with the hard drinking it got lost more and more.
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And I did have a bit of a romantic drive ... I was aware of girls and I was aware of an attraction for them existing ... and I chatted to girls a few times and felt happy about that but I did not 'follow through' by actually going to visit girls and getting a relationship started with any of them. I only once went to visit a girl and found out she had a boyfriend and that was the end of that. And there was one girl I was very attracted to but I only chatted to her when I was almost dead drunk and did not have the guts to go see her when I was sober.
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And I started falling behind with the studies. And also I was losing my hold on the *subjects* I was studying. Like I said earlier, my sense of these 'subjects' was a way of holding on to reality. But in the second year the 'subjects' became more unreal and so my hold on them started slipping as well. With the Chemistry it was the lab work. I was all thumbs, I kept breaking test tubes and flasks and other glass equipment, and I had to pay for it all from my own non-existent funds of money ... and my experiments never turned out the way they should... and amidst the struggling with the experimental side I started neglecting the theoretical side and at last I was forced to jettison some of my courses. And in physics the studies were becoming extremely weird. We were starting to study quantum mechanics, and the implications of some of that were just impossible for me to accept. I must say this was something serious ... it may be impossible for a 'normal' person to grasp, but for me in the insane state in which I was, physics used to be my lifeline and with the weirdness of quantum mechanics this lifeline got cut.
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The only subject that I was still on top of was mathematics. Right up until my suicide attempt I kept getting good grades for maths and I kept attending the classes. But mathematics wasn't enough ... maths couldn't be my lifeline the way physics was. Maths is already so tenuously connected with 'real life' ...
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My life disintegrated and fast. It reached the point where there were such surreal 'symptoms' as my bike getting stolen over and over again. My bike was stolen at least three times. Each time I bought a new bike, one that looked exactly like the one that was stolen, only to have it stolen again. I tried more and more to keep it safe ... got a lock and chain and locked it up whenever I left it ... tried to keep it on the hostel grounds where security is supposed to guard it ... but nothing worked. Each time it got stolen again. Each time the same bike getting stolen ... I even bought a chain that looked the same as the old chain and a lock that looked the same as the old lock only to have it stolen again. Why did this start happening just then ...?
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And some further 'symptoms' ... my physical health deteriorated. I kept getting nagging illnesses. At that time I started trying to bodybuild but it was a disaster ... I trained too much and wore myself down, and I ate badly and got fat instead of muscular. And I kept getting sick. I also did such things as walk many miles to the Pretoria Botanical Garden, and then I sprained my ankle there, and had to hobble back to my hostel on the sprained ankle, for several miles but luckily a fellow hostel inmate and his parents saw me on my way back and gave me a lift back that saved me a few miles. But I didn't even get any medical attention for the ankle. I wasn't even bothered by it (though it must have been excruciating) because I had so little of a sense of my individual wellbeing.
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And finally my personal stuff kept getting lost. It ended with me losing my bag with everything in it ... whatever 'self' I had was largely contained in that bag. I can't even remember what was in the bag but when I lost it it seemed like the end of the world to me. On that same day I also lost my last bike and I suffered yet another physical accident ... on an escalator I cut a huge gash in my big toe of my right food when I misstepped onto it. So I was hobbling around again. I was bleeding a lot but hardly minded it ... there was just this sense of all this bleeding and the injury but no real discomfiting from it. At least no discomfiting that I was aware of. But in some way this injury along with the lost bike and bag and I think a missed test was just the last straw. I went over the edge then ... it was on that day. I remember now, there was a missed test as well. Maybe a physics or chemistry test ... most probably a physics test because I think by then I had dropped the chemistry. But with the missed test and the lost bike and the lost bag and the toe injury my last hold just shredded to pieces.
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And then there was the paranoia that was starting up around then. It had been going on for a while. I'm talking serious paranoia here, not just your common or garden variety. It surfaced in such ways as getting upset by something some idiot did on the road when I was walking. I don't know if it was someone who was driving by in a car when I was walking and I don't know what this someone did but I got extremely enraged about it and I fantasised that I was going to pull this someone from the car and actually physically rip his head off. It became a sort of reality for me, I thought I actually could do it or that I actually would do it or that I actually did do it. I couldn't even tell which it was. There were such incidents. Then there was the studies itself. I started believing that people were sabotaging my efforts. I was experiencing such weird mishaps that I started to seriously believe in this 'sabotage'. I started to believe that the lab lady was sabotaging me for some reason ... the only real thing that there was was that she criticised my handwriting once ... but on the grounds of this, and my absolutely surreal inneptness in the laboratory, I started believing she was the one who was sabotaging my studies and entire life. I became white-hot with rage at her. I actually wanted to kill her. I actually planned killing her and went over the plan over and over again in my mind. I would kill her in a way that nobody could link to me. I would simply go to the Uni extra-early, and catch her on the stairs when she came to open the laboratory, and first make sure there was absolutely no-one around to see me, then I would throw her down the stairs from the lab (which was on the second floor) and old and frail as she was she would die instantly. Then I would vanish quickly and nobody would see me or blame me or even dream that I did it ... they'd just know that the lab lady had tragically fallen down the stairs and died.
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But thankfully before I could do that it happened that I lost my bike and bag and missed a test and hurt my foot. Then all was lost beyond repair and there was no point in it any more.
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During my last days on Earth I sat in my room drawing pencil pictures of animals from a book into my notebook. They were beautiful painstaking little pictures ... I still have them all except for one, of a little frog, that somebody bought from me just a while ago (in 2002 i.e. ten years after these 'last days' of mine). I was supposed to be studying my subjects but didn't and instead just sat and made these little drawings of things that had nothing to do with physics, chemistry or mathematics.
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Going through my mind at this time was this: 'I', in whatever sense 'I' existed, was nothing more than a waste of money and time and effort and air and room on this Planet. 'I' had done nothing except for losing and breaking things that needed to be repaired with other people's money. These other people existed and were important whereas I did not really exist and was not important. I had broken lab equipment which the lab needed to replace. I had lost property that other people needed to pay for to replace. I even felt guilty for having bought a camera which somebody 'forced on' me on a trip I had to the zoo. I believed the camera was stolen and hid it in a box in my room, scared that anyone should find out I had it. It finally *was* stolen and I was happy to find that it wasn't any more where I had left it. But I felt guilty about having spent the money on this camera also. I felt guilty about having eaten food for which other people had to pay, for occupying a room which other people had to pay for. Basically the people who had to pay for all of this were my parents ... though the place where they worked, the University of the North, did the majority of this paying. It only did so because of the work they did for it, so in that sense it was their money. So all I was was a waste of my parents' time and money. My studies were not going anywhere any more so the reason for being there at all had vanished. So I had decided I had to let myself vanish as well. The only thing that would vanish with my existence would be a source of misery and dissipation. I did not have any sense of losing anything at all by my own death. Can you understand that ... there was nothing at all that I believed I would lose by dying! I had absolutely nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to! I was not even depressed ... there was no 'I' to feel any depression. I did not feel sad at the prospect of losing my life. I had no sense of it being 'my life' in the first place. It was just 'a life' and as such an especially embarrassing one so it would be good to rid the world of this life.
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Some part of me, however, wrote my parents a letter just before I made the attempt. It was not a 'suicide note'. It was a lot of weird and disconnected stuff, illustrated with a creature I made up whose head was in the place of its tail and its tail in the place of its head. No explanation accompanied the picture and it wasn't in any sense connected to the text of the letter. I can't even remember what it was that the letter said ... I think now however that it consisted mainly of a lot of anagrams made up from the names of various species of owl to be found in South Africa. For instance 'Cow's Slop' for 'Scops Owl'.
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Oh and how could I forget this? A while before the attempt this also happened. Something transpired between me and some friends of mine. I cannot remember what. But at this I became incredibly enraged. After they had gone out of my room I closed the door behind them and took a knife that I had and with this knife attacked the door. I stabbed it full of holes. In the process the knife slipped and I cut my hand. I was fascinated by the blood. I went into the bathroom and spurted blood all over it ... the walls, the floor, I'm sure even the ceiling. Then I went to my room and in my blood I wrote the words 'Death' and 'Kill' on the wall, letting the blood drift down in trails from the letters so it looked good. I was overjoyed at having done that and I was proud of having done that and showed it off to all my friends. Most of them acted as if it was no big deal but one or two said to me they found it frankly odd and disturbing. I couldn't understand that but I went and washed off some of the letters so that now the words read 'Eat' and 'Ill'. Dunno why ... but, strangely, it so happened that problems with eating food and with sickness were among the problems that haunted me then. I somehow thought that things were now alright even though the words were still written in my blood on my wall.
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But those words in blood were already there for many days, perhaps weeks, when the day finally came when I actually decided to kill myself and committed myself to doing it.
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It was actually a fast decision when at last it happened. I was sitting in my room late at night ... I may have been drunk as well, I don't clearly remember ... and suddenly the idea came to me. I took a huge plastic bowl and filled it with water. Then I went to my cupboard which was filled with medications. There were lots of medications because of all my health problems around that time. I rarely used up any box of pills, and I never threw anything away. There were masses of stuff there. I just took it all. I swallowed handfulls of pills washed down with gulps of water from the bowl. I also took my asthma inhalator which was still almost full (I only very infrequently got attacks) and emptied it into my lungs. I was later told that that ought to have stopped my heart. In fact I took in such overdoses of so many different drugs that the doctors later told me it was enough to kill fourteen people.
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But when I did all of that, I wasn't feeling bad at all. It wasn't like the later suicide attempts. In fact, I felt ecstatic, euphoric. After drinking it all, I went to bed and peacefully to sleep. I thought I would either wake up in heaven, or just completely lose all sense of existence, which I would have welcomed. Except of course there would be no 'I' to welcome it.
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That was indeed the turning point. The old 'me' ... the almost nonexistent 'non-me'... did indeed die that night. Whoever and whatever it was that awoke after that was something different. It was a 'me' that to its great surprise found that it still existed, as an autonomous and individual sort of 'thing', and actually *wanted* to exist. It was an experience unprecedented in my life. In fact, the way I see it now, that is where my actual life *started*!!!
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My next posting will tell what happened next. I don't think I'll have time for it tonight, though...

Thanks, Willem, for sharing all of this. I know you're not finished yet, but wow. I can relate to a lot of things that you think and feel. But this degree of loss (or maybe lack would be a better word?) of your sense of identity that you lived with for all those years is unfathomable to me. I can understand what you mean when you say that when you attempted suicide, you didn't think there was anything to lose... I do understand to some degree the feeling of just being "a life", just occupying space. I have often felt that by ridding the world of my life, I'd be making an improvement, ridding people of the burden of myself. The level of depersonalisation you've described experiencing, I can't even begin to comprehend what that must be like.

I'm so very glad that you're here, Willem, and that you're you, that the autonomous "you" was born that day and wanted to exist. My world at least is better already for having you in it. I have to admire you very much as well for surviving, and for accomplishing good things in life, like your art and stuff! You're in my thoughts and prayers, and I look forward to your next posting.

Thanks Psychocandy! In my case the depersonalisation happened because of lots of things that went wrong during my period of development as a child and from a child to an adult. I want to say a few things about depersonalisation ...
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In many cases, depersonalisation is a practical method for escaping from intolerable circumstances: 'This isn't really happening' ... or 'This isn't really happening to me' or 'This isn't really happening to me because there *is* no me that it could be happening to'. As such it can help people survive these intolerable circumstances. But later on it can cause problems like mine, and worse.
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Depersonalisation can also be intentionally produced in people, and exploited. This happens as part of indoctrination, whether religious or political. There are various ways of depersonalising people, and once they're depersonalised, they become instantaneously receptive to dogma because the 'I' that exercises control over what the mind accepts or rejects doesn't function or even exist any more.
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I consider this an incredible, extreme form of abuse that produces absolutely mind-boggling damage. And it occurs on a massive scale in the world today!! There are many institutions that regularly and routinely, almost casually, produce depersonalisation in people because it's believed that that's just the way things work. And most times there is no realisation that it is wrong and produces damage, and that there might be a better way of going about things! In the Old South Africa military and police training involved a great deal of depersonalisation and I'd later like to speak about that. This military training began when we were just children. Depersonalising troops is I think standard procedure in military training because a troop isn't supposed to be an individual. S/he is supposed to be there merely as a fighting unit, and is supposed to obey orders instantly and without question, without the intermediary role of an individual ego. Whatever individual attributes the troop may have or lack is of no concern, the only thing that matters is whether s/he will fight and obey orders. I mean, in a combat situation, who cares if you're interested in Rap music or hard rock? Or whether you enjoy birdwatching as a hobby, or whether you enjoy reading science fiction? There are only fringe areas where individuality could be expressed at all under military conditions. Right now I still don't really know just how much damage this routine military depersonalisation causes in people. I also don't know if it's still as bad here in South Africa as it was in the Apartheid days and I don't know what it's like in other countries. But I have clues and based on them I think it is not a good thing at all. I am massively critical of almost all military institutions. And yet I am not a total pacifist. But I believe fighting should only happen when it is absolutely necessary for self defense and I also believe that military training should be approached completely differently. But I know this isn't something that could possibly be debated with somebody who still is in the military or in a police force where this is all accepted as the way things have to be.
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Parents can also depersonalise their children as a way of controlling them ... or children may depersonalise spontaneously in an effort to escape situations of extreme abuse ... overpowering and controlling husbands can cause their wives to depersonalise ... I'm not yet sure if wives could be so dominant as to produce depersonalisation in their husbands, but I guess it's theoretically possible. It could also happen in same-sex couples where the one dominates the other. It could also happen between siblings where the one is much stronger, physically and/or psychologically, and dominant over the weaker one. It can happen with bullying in schools. It can be inflicted by schoolteachers on children. It can and does happen in churches. In fact my own church was a major cause of my problems and is a continuing cause of such problems in other people. Depersonalisation can also occur in people who have jobs where they are rigorously constrained and controlled and where there is no allowance for or recognition of their individuality. It can happen where people are trapped in miserable living circumstances with seemingly no hope of helping themselves. It can happen as a result of alcohol or drug use, short term or long term ... in fact many people use alcohol and/or other drugs precisely for this purpose. It can also happen as a symptom of a mental illness such as schizophrenia.
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Strangely enough, my own depersonalisation was tied towards living for a 'cause' rather than for my own sake ... and now, ironically, I have a cause again! Namely, confronting depersonalisation and the institutions that cause them! It's OK to have a cause, so long as the cause doesn't come to replace your autonomous self and all your individual powers of judgement. And also, it's better to choose your own cause rather than to have a cause imposed on you from above.
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OK, those are only a few thoughts on depersonalisation. Now to continue the story from where I left off ... and I think people considering suicide may find it interesting to read the following section carefully ...
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I went to sleep thinking I would never wake up again or that I would wake up in magically-changed circumstances. Or wake up discovering that nothing had happened, that the suicide attempt itself was just a dream. But I was very suprised when in fact I did wake up again, later that morning, in that same bed and room, and not feeling very good at all. I may have been unconscious for a few hours. It was pain and discomfort that woke me up. It was more or less like the mother-in-law of all hangovers. Extreme pain in my entire body, extreme nausea. I went to the bathroom and puked a lot. I was reeling on my feet. I knew I was in BIG TROUBLE. And like I said, suddenly and amazingly I knew that I was alive and that I wanted to be alive and that death would somehow be even worse than the way I was feeling at that moment. I got a floormate to take me to a doctor. I couldn't explain to him what the problem was but I guess he could tell from the look of me that something was seriously amiss. He drove me to the campus doctor and then I had to sit and wait a while in the waiting room, then go in to the doctor and explain to him what was wrong with me ... imagine that! In the condition I was in!
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Well miraculously I managed to do that. I managed to explain to the doctor that I had taken massive overdoses and I managed to write the different brand names of the medications down for him, and the approximate dosages I took. He let me lie down and summoned an ambulance. What was interesting to me was that he asked me if I lifted weights. He said he did not see as many upper arms as thick as mine. I was rather perplexed at the comment because I didn't think I had big arms but the remark stuck. It was not often I received compliments about anything. My developing ego took note of that small gesture though it couldn't credit it. But I kinda passed out again after that. I remember the ambulance arriving and being put into it. I remember a bit of the drive to the hospital, and I remember getting wheeled out. But it's all kind of hazy and it's like a bunch of short, disconnected scenes. I only remember that once in the hospital I had to wait for a bed. And that wait was like forever. I had to sit on a hard wooden bench along with other people and I couldn't lie down, I couldn't pass out! That was like absolute hell. I don't know for how long I sat on that bench. It felt like I aged by many years, sitting on that bench experiencing extreme pain and anguish and duress, trying to get comfortable, trying to bend over and put my head on my knees, but that didn't help, then trying to straighten up, trying to lean back against the wall but that didn't help either ... the pain and the nausea and the pain and the nausea and the pain and I couldn't lie down, couldn't go to sleep, it was hell merely trying to breathe, and I just had to sit there on that bench along with the other people, waiting for a bed and for doctors to be free to attend to me. And my mind kept trying to drift off, but it couldn't, reality kept madly switching in and out, and my head was reeling and filled with buzzing and screaming and sirens and flashing lights and bombs going off and all sorts of crazy stuff.
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Well, at last I saw a doctor and again I had to explain my problem. I don't know if I showed him the same list I wrote down for the campus doctor ... in fact I kinda have the impression I had to write it all down again, despite my state of mind. But the doctor took one look at the list and panicked. They didn't know what to do because it was so many different medications that I took. If they gave me something that helped for the one kind, it would work against me in combination with the other kinds, and so on. In desperation they put me on a drip and took lots of blood samples. They poked me quite full of holes, but I was so far gone that I hardly even noticed the pain, and hardly even worried about the needles even though I have a phobia of needles and injections. They discovered that, among other things, the potassium levels in my blood had dropped to about zero. That alone ought to have killed me quite stone cold dead in fact. They couldn't figure out why I was still alive and indeed still a little bit conscious. But they put me on a drip and they gave me activated carbon to drink. I don't know if they pumped my stomach ... I can't remember them doing it, maybe there was some reason why they couldn't do it, or maybe they did it but I didn't know because I had finally passed out well and proper.
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But I woke up again soon after, anyways. When I woke up the pain and nausea was worse than before. I wouldn't have believed that that could be possible, but it was. I spent the first night there unable to sleep for the pain and discomfort. The activated carbon I drank made me nauseous and made me puke. I first puked out all of that yecchy sticky black tarry stuff, and then I kept on puking though there was nothing to puke - dry-heaving. The acid coming from my stomach burned my throat, my mouth, my nose. And after all the puking I still felt nauseous, and I still felt extreme pain. I lay in that bed, unable to fall back asleep and unable to be comfortable. I squirmed and writhed and tossed and turned. The extreme and deep pain just went on and on. It was as if my whole body was burning, from the inside to the outside. And amidst all this I had visual hallucinations as well. In the dark hospital room, lights and shadows played around and shaped themselves into little devil-figures that gambolled and cavorted all over the room ... peeking out from behind beds and chairs and tables, leaping up from the bedclothes and scurrying down underneath the beds ... and I saw all sorts of strange figures developing and changing. When a nurse came in and did some things I saw how the shadows came and met her and went away again like living things. These hallucinations weren't that bad and in fact I welcomed and encouraged them to take my mind off what I was feeling inside.
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That night was the worst night of my life up till then, and it was the one time in my life that I found that I had to really fight, and that I did indeed really have this fight in me. That night in my madness I fought like a madman. I fought like mad to retain my hold on life and on reality. Despite the pain I held on and battled through. I knew I just had to make it through that night. And I did! It seemed like absolutely forever, but at last I was through that night, and it was a new day. In fact it was not quite a new day yet. It was merely the first morning shift of the hospital personnel, it was still quite dark outside ... possibly three or four o' clock in the morning ... but the nurse came in and lit a light and attended to me and to the other patients that light shone to me like a new day. From then on I knew the worst was behind.
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Little did I know however how much there was I still had to go through. But that one night that I spent alone in my pain and terror was over. At least now I felt like I was among the living again. I could at last talk to people ... nurses and fellow patients. Next to my bed was a young man with a black beard and mustache who was admitted for his xth suicide attempt. I don't remember how many others there was. But he drank muscle relaxants. He told me how many times he had already tried to commit suicide and that he believed he would someday succeed in doing it properly. I wished him the best of success! I mean I wasn't exactly in any position to moralize. A nurse who attended me - she was quite pretty - told me she, too tried to commit suicide a long time ago and she showed me a couple of very ugly scars across both her wrists. I got the impression that the hospital personnel in general kind of resented the suicide-attempt patients, because these were people with self-inflicted problems unlike the majority of hospital patients who are inside through no direct cause of their own. But nowadays I think suicide is not really just a self-inflicted thing. I see it as a kind of social problem. People don't just commit suicide just because they wanna, there are some pretty serious reasons for why they do it. And also, it's not just their own problem, it's other people's problem as well, such as the people who remain behind.
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I was in there for a while. I had no idea where I would go next. I gradually recovered some bodily strength and I tried to eat. I asked them for bananas because they are a good source of potassium and like I said my potassium levels had plummeted. The bananas arrived and eating them was like crunching up rough wooden boards with the splinters getting caught on my tongue and the roof of my mouth and my throat ... my mouth was so totally scorched and blistered from bringing up the stomach acid. My mouth was just raw, and it was terribly painful to try and eat, but I did try. They later brought me more meals and every one of them was ultra-painful to get down. And then I had to keep them down as well. Somehow I managed. And whatever came out the other end I had to give them as well, so they could analyse it. And they poked more needles into me. And I was still feeling as if my entire insides had been incinerated in a blazing inferno.
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Some time passed and I started to actually think of what to do next. I found that nobody had even notified my parents and I guess neither did anybody notify the hostel where I stayed. I had only the clothes that I had on when I came in. I asked that they notify my parents. My father finally arrived on the third day that I was in hospital. He was rather upset because out of the blue he had been told his son was in hospital after a suicide attempt. I couldn't just go home. I had to see a psychiatrist first. I tried to convince him that it wasn't really a suicide attempt. In my mind at that time indeed I never even thought of it as a suicide attempt. Suicide was something I was not allowed to do, I was not allowed to even think of doing it, and so I could in fact not think of doing it. Like I said earlier, my thinking was very disconnected from what I was actually doing. The only way I could actually commit a potentially suicidal act was by becoming psychotic and therefore I did indeed become psychotic. The decision and the act was indeed there, as I explained in the previous posting, but at the time this decision and act did not register in my conscious mind. For a long time I didn't really realise what I did or why. Anyways, to the psychiatrist I rattled off a long list of reasons why I still wanted to be alive. And all these reasons were true at the time because suddenly I did indeed want to be alive. But the psychiatrist at any rate said that I had suffered a psychotic episode and that I should be admitted into a psychiatric hospital immediately.
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But I begged the psychiatrist to just let me go home first for a while, to recover physically, before being admitted into the psychiatric hospital. I felt like hell. I just couldn't face going into a nuthouse in the condition I was. The psychiatrist allowed it and I went back to my hostel, cleared out my stuff, and then returned home for two weeks with my parents. I stayed over at my aunt's house on the way back, as well. This aunt of mine was aunt Lydia, my father's sister, just a bit younger than him. She was a great source of support for me back then and I'll tell more about her later. But at last I got to go home. The time spent at home was hell because the pain just continued. I also got a part of my uvula cut off by a doctor because it had swollen to about three times its normal size due to the burning of the stomach acid. It took very long for the soft lining of my mouth and throat and stomach to recover and for all this time it was very difficult to eat food.
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Well, I spent these two weeks at home, speaking about this and that with my parents. We never really got into what the problem was, exactly. Then at last I was sufficiently recovered and shipped off for my first stay in Denmar, a private psychiatric hospital in the Pretoria area.
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In my next posting ... what happened next.