The shape of reality

I have a new visual idea of the nature of life. It is a 3 dimensional ring – a giant dough nut of energy. The flow of the energy is something exogenous which we are not in control of. We flow around and interact with our environment. We are in a form of control over where we are in the water and how we move in the flow, but ultimately we can choose to fight against it or to “go with the flow.” So we exist and there are both endogenous and exogenous factors which control our movement.

I spend too much time fighting with my reality or with circumstances which are beyond my control.

Let go let god

The Changing winds

Today I went into to university because I had to do a presentation on anorexia. Its strange presenting a psychiatric condition you once had to an unknowing class. The presentation went averagely, and then I left. I drove out of the gates of Valkenburg hospital, past the maximum security ward. I will not be seeing psychotic patients for a while, hopefully a long while.

I have not been sleeping well. I lie in bed and struggle to find sleep. I know that in principle sleep needs to find me, but still. This morning it was not easy getting up.

I think I have a peptic ulcer. It hasn’t been bothering me today.

I have an oral exam on Thursday and a written exam on Friday.  I then have 6 days off. I have 2 multiple choice exams on the following Friday, then an oral exam at some point between Monday and Wednesday, then 2 more multiple choice exams on Thursday and then holidays. None of it feels real. I work for it, but I feel no fear, no desire. The work needs to be done by virtue of the fact that it exists.

I’m in a decent mood for the first time in a while. I’ve stopped feeling sorry for myself about Vanilla and started enjoying myself again.

I am writing a book. I have written 1-and-a-bit chapters so far. It’s a terrible book. I would feel very ashamed if my father read it. I think a part of him would die inside. I blame Lolita and Alia. They bring out the evil in me, but I am responsible.

I am worried about Alia. I have tried to fade her out, but she remains in my mind. She has decided to develop an eating disorder because she’s too normal in that way. I have tried to discourage her, but now I just worry.

Tomorrow I will study. I will hopefully go to collect a paper donation, and might even make it to aftercare. I am not sure about that though. I had planned to go see one of my psych patients again, but I have now decided against it. I am satisfied with my psych patients.

I put 11 A4 photos of Habo & Shnat into picture frames yesterday. I still need to put them up.

I am reading a book called Storm Front by Tim Butcher. Its entertaining. I am also reading my psychiatry text book. I am hardly studying and am still sure I’ll be fine.

I am plastic

Where I am right now

It is now 22h00 on Sunday 28th October 2007. I am sitting on my father’s late best friend Albert’s work chair at the large solid wooden desk my father gave me. I am in the process of trying to spend the remaining balance of our pay as you go internet account because tomorrow we will no longer be on pay as you go, so Telkom will steel all our money. I will not let Telkom get any money.

I need the toilet, but I am not going to go to the toilet quite yet. I am in my house in Edgemead. It’s a warmish summer’s night and I am wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants. I have just taken my socks off.

Emotionally I’m feeling a little dull. Physically I’m feeling slightly sore, but not too bad.

Regarding Vanilla; I went to the bayit this Saturday. I hang with my x’s brother and a few others, read a bit, did some uni work and didn’t see her. At one stage I thought she had arrived and I got very anxious. I am not in control of how I feel about her. I am trying to move on. I feel anxious and I miss her a little.

Regarding Alia; I have communicated with her this weekend. We spoke a little, though very superficially about where things are. I do not wish to define things, but I feel slightly more in control, though I imagine that I probably am not. She’s trying to develop an eating disorder presently. She frightens me something terrible.

Regarding my anti-christ. She mailed me to ask say she’s lonely and wonders why I do not contact her. I must reply.

Regarding university; I have undershot my work aims again. I am on track though. I have some stuff to hand in and 2 exams and a presentation later this week. I then have a week study leave followed by a week with many exams. I feel no stress.

Socially; I feel antisocial.

I feel profoundly lonely

Wants (w aa ntz) and Needs (needz)

I intended to sit down yesterday and set goals for myself; medium to long term goals in order to try to create some form of tolerable reality for myself. I have reflected bitterly how little I feel that I have after putting in so much work. From my origins, a dismal suicidal failure at age 16 with no prospects or hopes other than a quick death at home with mother dear I have matriculated well, gone on a gap year, gotten into medicine, passed 3 years of medicine, achieved many other things which should make me feel good, but the emptiness remains; like a deep dark pit waiting to swallow me whole and leave not a trace.

I thought this to be a result of poor planning. This is not true. It might be partially true, but it’s not the answer. I work hard and put into too much of myself, maybe not keeping enough to create myself; rather putting myself out and creating things for others. Furthermore I remembered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from my school English classes. I have not achieved the “Belongingness and Love needs” required as a base for esteem needs and self-actualisation.

In other words I still do not feel a need for any external goal or desire. I just want to be loved; that which Alia called putrid. I just want to be held and accepted in the same way as I held and accept. I want a relationship of equal or at least equitable goals, desires, feelings and actions. I have spent the past 7 years giving, maybe its time to try work out how to do the give-and-take thing.

Yesterday I need nothing productive. I procrastinated, felt tired, read and completed the dune trilogy, sorted out email, did some errands; pretty much an uneventful day.

Today I woke up early, did my kriya, got ready, then my glasses broke while I was cleaning them, which left my semi-blind for the rest of the day. Driving was scary. I attended a tutorial on nephrology, followed by a tutorial on diabetes, followed by a tutorial on haematology, after which I dropped my partner off at Valkenburg, then went to town to collect my iPod and fax Dylan my ID and drivers licence, after stopping off at Charlie’s for a brownie, before returning to Valkenburg for a seminar which was cancelled.

I then smoked nag with 2 university friends, after which I sat with one of them for hours speaking about life and its difficulties. I was pleased to find out my friend’s mom only had a polyp, not a carcinoma. I dropped my car off at their house then went and spent half an hour with Lolita, during which I reflected and decided to write an email to Alia explaining things more clearly.

Lolita’s friend from somewhere up country arrived and I left and went back to my regular’s house. I wrote Alia an email telling her how I was not prepared to play her games until she was prepared to commit to me and thereby give me a sense of emotional stability and growth. I apologised because I reacted in an immature and emotional way to her previously.

The weekend dawns with its loneliness and tempting solitude. I wish to sleep the whole time but my body won’t allow it. I hope it holds pleasant surprises.

Depravity

I always thought that I knew the full extent of human deprivation and desperation. I have felt these things strongly within myself, and born witness to them both in extreme forms though my experiences at Kaya and in the hospital. Today I came to realise that it is not at all possible to fully appreciate the extent of human suffering without truly spending time in the presents of the severely mentally ill:

There’s a man in Valkenburg maximum security. I don’t think that he even has a criminal charge laid against him, but he is completely psychotic and a constant danger to himself and to others. Today this gentleman came into our ward round and spoke for 20 minutes without anybody asking him anything. His speech made absolutely no sense what so ever. Then we asked him leave and he left.

Previously he had kicked his bare feet against the ground until the soles of his feet came off.

He once asked god whether he should remove one of his eyes as punishment for the sins he’s committed, in that biblical eye-for-an-eye sense. God – the voices in his head – said yes. So he put his eye out by stabbing a pen into it. He said that he heard and felt it pop.

This man is on the maximum available treatment but he remains psychotic.

Alia, who used to called Dominatrix in these pages, made me realise how foolish I was to trust her and to be venerable to her. It’s not that she is not trustworthy, or that she did not trust me, it’s more that her known motives are not conducive to me having a healthy relationship with her. I continued to speak to her and have our deep intense chats because I enjoyed them too. Today she pushed me over the edge and I am now finished with interacting with her. Blocked from msn, facebook, and deleted phone numbers. She can contact me if I want, but I must protect myself for she can and will destroy me for her own experience and discovery. She shared so much. Betrayal stings less with time, but I betrayed myself here.

Do you want to talk?

Do you want to talk dingles?

No. I want a hug. I want to understand why all my years of care and effort result in so little. I don’t want to have to tell you any more how much I love you. I don’t want to make small talk, or try talk seriously to you and be inadvertently trodden all over. I don’t want to put in effort to try make plans with you. You’re busy. I’m busy and you have other people to care about now.

Do you want to talk?

No thanks Spidey, we’ve spoken enough. I spent a year and a half trying to get you to say those few horrible truths to me that gave me enough reason to walk away from you unaffected scorn and hatred. I just want to sit with you, smoke nag and have you look at me with the care that you used to hold in those now dead, hateful eyes.

Do you want to talk Adam?

No. I tried to talk to you about my feelings once and you threw them back down my throat with all your added hatred and insecurities. You took my soul and love for you, which I held despite knowing you did not feel the same way, and told me to leave you alone. You acted selfishly and without care or sensitivity and made years of my life unbearable so that you wouldn’t have to deal with your feelings. I do not want to talk, I want to see be who you really are in front of me. I want to see those other emotions that you hide with your anxious happiness.

Do you want to talk dinks?

No C, I do not want to talk. For all my effort and care you couldn’t talk and you couldn’t move on. You fought me, bashed me and walked away. Yes, you are entitled to walk away whenever you want, but you were insensitive and callous. I see your future and I was worried, but now all that I hold is the last few setances you graced me with “Do not see me as a bad friend, because I am not your friend.” “I made me decision and there’s nothing you can do to change that.” I want to unmake every moment that I spent with you, because they were wasted your you superficial beauty.

Do you want to talk?

No flame, I do not. I want your warmth and physical affection. You teased me with it once and whenever I think of you it burns me to my soul. I do not want to talk with you any more.

Do you want to talk?

I do not know you, but you will betray me… I do not ever want to talk, I want to escape

Tired

I’ve been waking up quite early and then having repetitive dreams about oversleeping and fears from the day. I wake up before the alarm clock with a sense of the alarm clock not going off on time. I then doze off and wake up what must be quite soon afterwards with the same idea. I keep thinking “sleep, so many alarms cannot be wrong.” They never are, the inevitably ring and I don’t want to get up…

Valkenburg’s a hectic place. Before this stint at the forensic ward I thought that psychiatric patients were easy to deal with because they’re oblivious to their disease. I was gravely wrong. The amount of suffering these poor human beings endure is terrible and beyond. There own minds and worlds literally turn against them. The bipolar affective disorder patients and those with grandiose delusions are easy to deal with. Inherent in their condition is an elated mood and a sense of personal greatness, but as inherent is the crash, the depression and the guilt.

It’s the paranoid schizophrenics that get to me. It must be one of the most tormenting conditions to have the perceptions of a schizophrenic; a sense that others can hear your thoughts, that people can put thoughts into your head or take thoughts out of your head, having voices that are objectively coming from without your body commenting on your life, talking to your, commanding you and punishing you, developing delusional systems where people are out to get you, where the radio and TV give messages to you. It’s awful.

Then these people, both the schizophrenics and the bipolar affective disorder patients do terrible things because they are not aware of their true actions and the consequences. It’s reasonable for somebody who truly believes that the neighbours are having been stealing his thoughts, spying on him and even plotting to do specific terrible things to him to act out and assault them. Rape seems to be associated more with mania; child-rape more with mental retardation. These people are truly terrible in actions, and truly innocent and tormented in their intent.

Today we met a man who like hanging out by the radio. He seemed pretty benign until our registrar asked him about why he liked the radio. The radio tells him messages in the form of numbers. He then spoke for about 10 minutes about the numbers and their meaning, “465 means that they’re trying to kill my mother – she lives in a government house 465. There are no zeroes, all zeroes are sixes. 465 becomes 469. You must come see doctor I’ll show you 10706 is written on the floor there…” This man’s mind is a disaster of chaotic numbers and meaningless associations, it fills his entire day. The TV and Radio tell him numbers specifically him.

After spending the morning listening to child rapists, murderers, people who stabbed their father in the head, people charged with malicious damage to property and indecent assault, all of whom were completely deranged off their head, with strange delusions of ships, people, voices and incoherence, I left Valkenburg and went through to the office for camp work.

I got about an hour of pointless mingely work done on vehicles before I was booted off the computer so that the data capturer could learn her work. After an hour of waste I went back to work and got a lot of stuff done; flags, vehicles, 16 seaters, badges, manhig, letters, etc. I spoke to my buddy and my Joburg Soulmate. During both conversations I felt soulless and empty, drained by the day. Worried about one of the office workers I’m fond of who has painful splenomegaly; worried about my friend’s mom with the abdominal mass; feelings the meaninglessness and emptiness around me; tangible like a gun or knife; flowing through me and taking small pieces of my soul away…

Return to a similtude of normality

After what was a hectic period of emotional ups and downs things seemed to have levelled off again. I’m sleeping well and my base level of anxiety is back to normal. I’ve not seen Vanilla for nearly a week. I’ve not communicated with her and I feel alright. I had a pang of sadness, loss and desperation when I saw her on MSN earlier today, but I’m ok now. I’m now taking seroquel 100mg po nocte and cymbalta 60mg po mane. I feel decent, I sleep at night and I function well during the day.

It is crunch time in my university and Habonim spheres.

I have psychiatry exams in 2 week and final 4th year exams in 4 weeks. They cover a huge range of topics and are quite daunting. I have to have completed my portfolio of learning at printed it for my exams. I have been working on it for months, but not too hard. I now only need to see 2 more psychiatry patients, find 4 more adapted treatment plan patients and write up 24 more question-and-answer tasks. The question and answer task is really daunting for no reason and I am struggling to more on it.

Last Tuesday I returned to the emergency room at Groote Schuur. It was the HOD’s last week at work. He’s an amazing diagnostician and a very interesting character of whom I am quite fond. I’m sad to see him go and interested to see what becomes of C15.

During my time there I saw a grown woman with hypoglycaemia and known chronic renal failure. She was in a nappy literally overflowing with faeces. I wasn’t going to change her nappy, her family certainly didn’t seem like they were suddenly going to changer her and the nurses refused. A part of my sole was destroyed once more.

At Valkenburg I have seen quite a few interesting but disturbing patients. I saw a man with severe mental retardation who is 21 years of age but functions at the level of 3 – 6 year old. He is in Valkenburg because he rapes little boys and doesn’t see anything wrong with it. His family refuse to believe that he rapes boys, so he reoffended the last time he was allowed out. Its terribly sad and difficult.

I saw a poet who got very angry and left. I saw a man who believed he was god and that people wanted to give him five-hundred-thousands-million rand. I saw a man who had a formal thought disorder with circumstantiality, tangentiality, povery of thought and pressured speaking. I saw many many more people who are trapped in Valkenburg and diseased severly with voices, hallucinations, passivity phenomena, mania, strange delusions like not believing that your family were related to you.

On Wednesday after aftercare I reconnected with an old friend of mine who has gotten into growing peppers and chillies. He lives in a digs with his brother and his friend the magician. I had a really decent evening with them. Earlier on during the day I went to upper campus for some pathetic protest. It was one of the worst organised events I’ve been to in a long time. I bumped into one of the most beautiful girls I know on campus and hung out with her a bit. It’s such a pity she doesn’t like me, I think she’s great!

On Monday I go to the office and do work for camp. I am finalising vehicles, computers and trying to get flags and badges made. I have quite a lot of stuff on the go, but feel productive and am having a good time. I am worried about camp and Vanilla at camp. She’s going to be with some out of town person and its going to hurt a lot.

On Friday I found out that the mother of the people I usually go to on Friday night has a mass in her abdomen and needs to go for scopes this coming Friday. I am tremendously concerned.

I spent a quite weekend at home, often feeling quite good. I have gotten back into my Kriya. I did some cleaning and house keeping, spoke to my father about getting ADSL at home, watched the Rugby with my family, did some university work and relaxed.

Even in the good space that I am in now I honestly feel that if you reduce everything that happens in life into positives and negatives the sum total is negative and that life is not worth living. The little victories emphasise the true greatness and terror of the defeats. I live a meaningless existence of production; I create, learn and act only because I have no choice.

Lessons learned from Habonim Dror

Lessons learned from Habonim Dror Southern Africa

Adam Zac Baldinger

After much convincing by some of the only friends I had at the time I agreed to go to Habonim Dror Machaneh Tzion 1997. I was a shy, socially inept 13 year old who was anxious about the people, the environment and everything else, but took a leap of faith that has enriched my life in so many ways over the past 10 years.

 

My first 2 camps, Bonim and Amelim, were simple experiences. I learned how to socialise and made a few good friends, like Sack, that I still count as my closest to this day. The campsite was a place infinitely far away from Cape Town, civilization and all the complications and difficulties there.

 

After missing my Sollelim year I returned to camp for Sayarim Machaneh Salaam Ba’olam 2000. The previous year had been an intense and challenging year of growth for me. At this stage I had shoulder length hair, the beginnings of my Gotti and nargilla was my thing. This was without a doubt the happiest time of my life, I was popular, having fun, meeting people and just feeling great. I received a warning after the first Shabbat Tekes where I allowed myself to be peer-pressured into being “crucified” on the Sayarim wall against the direst instruction of my rosh. This warning and the fear of loosing this place which was bringing me so much joy was the turning point in my Habonim Dror career.

 

After being profoundly changed at machaneh I was heavily involved in Habonim Dror Cape Town; I attended almost every weekly meeting, in my chultza. At this stage I was struggling to identify where exactly I fitted in. I was an intellectual idealist who enjoyed hard work and listened intently to the bogrim debating; really. At this stage the veida was a single A4 page and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I learned about fitting in and finding my place and niche.

 

My Shomrim machaneh was not great; I built it up in my head too much. During the machaneh I used to clean up kikar in my free time and read the Communist Manifesto. I can vaguely remember graduating to bogrim. I learned about the importance of having fun and having a balance.

 

During my Bogrim 1 year I still attended every weekly meeting and maintained my exciting, idealism and love of debate. I was a bonim madrich at camp in 2002 which was an extremely challenging experience. I learned how to do hadrachah, I functioned on no sleep and learned many valuable things about myself.

 

In 2003 I went on Shnat and had one of the most amazing, terrible, incredible, unforgettable and generally above average years of my life. I continued learn about myself, my knowledge about Habonim, Israel, Hebrew, Judaism, Hadrachah and group dynamics expanded phenomenally.

 

From about halfway though Shnat I gradually became very disillusioned about ideology, Habonim, people & Israel. I heard all the debates too many times. I was betrayed by close friends and my naive concept of humanity on which I had built up my life, Habonim career and idealism shattered irreparable into an infinite amount of sharp fragments.

 

Struggling to re-establish myself in Habonim and in my world I returned from shnat into the chaos of machaneh, medicine, Habonim dror Cape Town and my unstable home life and put a lot of effort into Habonim. Habonim had always provided what I needed, the more I gave the more I got back. I took on the Sollelim kids and worked hard with them from machaneh 2003 to the end of machaneh 2004. I had many meaningful interactions with them and loved them dearly, yet I could not shake off the sense of repetitiveness and meaninglessness which I had acquired during Shnat. My hadracheh skills improved and I build meaningful and functional relationships within the movement. I learned about relationships, hanalot, the importance of the shared experience and the maddie/channie relationship

 

Wayne spoke to me towards the end of camp and ear-marked me for Camp Organiser 2005. I spent a lot of time during the camp with Tal Nathan, the Camp organiser and learned the campsite and its workings.

 

I was camp organiser for the two mini-machanot in 2005 and learned a great deal about managing a mini-mach, working in teams, ordering, organising and communicating. I was approached and encouraged me to take the position of Ekonom. Although it was not my first choice for camp I took on the position and gave it everything I had. I learned huge volumes on organisation, team work, planning large scale events, team dynamics and catering en mass. Then I learned about failure, taking one for the team and dealing with being shafted. I learned about some of my weak points; dealing with people, people management and peer hadrachah

 

After what was without a doubt the worst machaneh I’ve attended I spent 6 months out of Habonim, returning as the VP assistant, a job which I repeated again in for machaneh in 2007. This job also taugh me a great deal about organisation, technical management of events, electricity, water, vehicles, crisis management, successful team work and many other things.

 

My career in Habonim Dror Southern Africa, as a madrich, a leader, a fixer, a caterer, a technician and a boger has now come to its end. Reflecting back on the huge quantity of memory and experience Habonim Dror has imparted on me I believe that the most important thing that I have learned is friendship; what it means to be chaver. To sweat together, suffer, love, hate, build and destroy together; its about altruism, fidelity and humanity.

 

It is a daunting and frightening task to move on from these past 10 years, but Habonim Dror has equipped me well to undertake it.

Sorry Vanilla, it’s fucking out, save it or it’s gone…

It is with innocent, blind randomness that you sow the seeds of fear and doubt in my mind and through my emotions. Both in my conscious thought and unconscious dreams I long for your company and comfort. I sit at home now and waste away the slow creeping minutes waiting and hoping for some form of contact from you.

I know and believe that you will not contact me.
I know and believe that your lack of contact is unintentional and no spite is intended
My knowledge does not help sooth the apocalyptic tidal wave of my anxiety
It does not help stop the slowly approaching black wall of my depression, failure and decreased self-worth
It does not lessen the sense of utter pathos that envelopes me totally and completely.
Yet I know that no malice is intended

My mind tries to plan ways to see you. It tries to tell me that I need to get out now, to create the plan that will result in me stopping by the bayit and pathetically dogging after you for some discarded half-eaten scrap of attention that will stay my pain for 5 pathetic minutes.

“No! No dinks, you need to learn to self-sooth. She’s bad for you leave her. You must. You’re the only one who can save yourself”

My mind might leave you then, but it is blackened and defocused from the safety of this inevitable moment. It sees the loss and suffering around me, the inescapable agony of being. It moves to the people I’ve lost and then back to you”

“No Dinks! Just for today, just for 5 minutes I will not contact you. I will not think about you.”

I search around the forced order I have created in my room, I try to study, I try to make plans to see other people, but I trap myself again. I have to go near where you live anyway, maybe I could stop in and ignore you and see my other close friends that live with you. Maybe I should confront you. Maybe I should tell you it isn’t working. Maybe I should tell you how weak and pathetic I am. Maybe I should tell you about how insecure I am feeling because of you. Maybe I should walk into the forest with a sharp knife…

“No Dinks! Just for now you will stop this. No Dinks! NO!”

Maybe I should go to you tomorrow and say how I am sorry and that it is not working. Maybe I should walk out again and leave for good. Maybe that’ll make a difference.

No Dinks, it won’t make a difference. You fucked yourself again, you fucked yourself royally. Not only did you destroy another valuable relationship, but you destroyed a place of safety, you damaged another 4 friendships, you might have ruined your last camp. No Dinks, nothing you can do or say is going to make this better. You are utterly powerless. You’ll feel pathetic each time you try to sort it out, each time you run back. You’ll feel sad when you think about what was and angry with yourself for ruining it.

You are powerless Dinks, be powerless for powerlessness is the only thing that will save you.