Lucas ca. 2010 said:
In Montesano I worked for my step dad here and there. I washed dishes at the Beehive Family Diner in Monte. What little cash I had extra I would buy booze just to feel uninhibited and have a laugh. I got into LSD from some poor choices of friends. I tripped. I would have fun if I could get away with it. My fake assed friends left me by the wayside because that's what fake assed friends do. I had a break with reality. Started hallucinating even without the acid. My parents insisted I see a shrink if they were going to continue to allow me to live at home with my erratic, emotional and sometimes violent behavior. So I did. We moved to Olympia. I had a few more nervous break downs. Most of 2000-2004 is a blur. Even when I had my own place to live in assisted living by 2003 or 2002, (I'm not exactly sure, to tell you the truth) I was alone. Felt stranded. Smoked weed or drank when I could afford a little. Had trouble concentrating and managing my money responsibly. I spent most days wishing I was dead and this hell was over. I would have night terrors from the drug cocktail of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants I was on.
For a lot of that time I wasn't even really there. I had trouble distinguishing between my own thoughts and the rest of the outside world. I was a ghost. I wasn't slightly aware of who I was or where I was or what was going on half the time. I sort of just drifted in and out of conscious connection to myself and the side effect hallucinations from the medicines. Not to mention the back and forth between the psych units in the hospital and more medication tweaking, I'm not sure I was anything you would call a self-aware human being from late 2003 until maybe mid 2004. I was more like a shell. I had no idea who I was. I certainly didn't know I had anything you would call an identity. I knew who people were and the setting I was in, but I wasn't quite sure if I was imagining my daily experience or if I was in sort of like an underwater bubble with people faintly resembling what I remembered or if they were mythical creatures like angels or aliens. Or gnomes and trolls or something straight out of a horror-fantasy novel.
I became more like a pet. I could respond to my own name after 2 or 3 calls. My behavior was weird. I was basically a pet dog or cat for whomever recognized me as having a name. I probably would have just as easily responded to "Here, boy" or a come here hand gesture, if you had a snack for me to take. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happened sometimes. The only three intelligent things I could do was sign my name, nod or shake my head with maybe a one or two word response and feed myself. There's something else I'm obviously forgetting. Going to the bathroom. A lot of times I would just find a bush outside and piss on it. I don't know why. It's just what did. I was pretty doped up. I'm surprised I was able to get to a toilet to deficate. Sometimes I didn't even make it that far. I had accidents. I had to retrain myself how to hold my bowels again.
A lot of the time I just didn't care. I didn't have ambitions. I didn't have drives. My mental state was shot to hell. I only taught myself to concentrate again so I could pick up a book. The first thing I read after children's books, was Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I liked it so much I read it again, cover to to cover, a month later. I also read A Man in Full by Thomas Wolfe because I never got around to Bonfire of The Vanities for some reason. I've heard good things. I also still like kid stories. Humpty Dumpty. Three Little Pigs. I have written some of my own children's literature. My Aunt also writes children's stories. She tells me I should become a children's writer. She really enjoyed a story I wrote called Three Thrown Stones about a little girl who finds 3 different types of rocks and plays with them one sunny day. The stones come to life after she leaves and philosophize about life for a million years. "Stones" is a veiled reference to schizophrenia and learning to cope with symptoms, for children having mental difficulties like I did. Medication side effects are one of those difficulties I've had to cope with, so one of the stones has a visible tremor.
