I remember when in middle school I made up something called a “Dreamscape”. It was around the time I had just started learning about web page making in the simplest sense. I drew rather sketchy things at the time… I was in seventh grade maybe? Those sketches were a strange people… they were similar to us, but their skin was black as ink and their hair was of primary and secondary colors… none of those in between shades. You couldn’t see any features upon their faces either… no noses, no mouths… You could see their eyes though. It didn’t matter if they were smiling, scowling or something else. You’d never know. I made a crap-tacular website for amusement and scanned the pictures into my computer. After coloring them in a paint program I’d put them up.
I don’t know why I did that, but I think I wanted to make a world of human-like beings that didn’t make my life hell. That, or I was just bored. They had small descriptions. One was an inseparable pair. They were always together, joined at the hip and if one left for the simplest thing, like say nature calling, the one left outside the door would think the world was ending. Remembering that, I smile. I guess that was why they were made. They amused me.
Well, in the thought of that vague, shortly lived world… I thought of now. I realized something tonight. Though I had made that little world where things seemed a whole lot better to me… I look at my life right now and I think, “I achieved that now.”
Yeah, the life I live now and the world created then are nothing alike… but they are still the same idea: Inner Peace.

Summer of year 1995.

No, not the super hero. This morning, my cat finally caught one of the mice that have been plaguing our cabinets. Well, it might have been only one, but you never know. I was passing by him as he sat under the rocking chair and noticed a long, thick string. Thinking he might have been playing with a rubber band again, I checked. He had a mouse in his clutches!
Atticus wouldn’t give it up either. He was growling and snarling at it even though it was obviously dead. My mom, she hates rodents. I called her over urgently since she was the most disturbed by the “little visitor”. She was happy. I am meanwhile proud of my little boy.
It took a good long while for him to give it up though. We assume he was making sure it was good and dead. He was growling and snarling all the way. Well, when he finally let go, I scooped him up so my mom could dispose of the mouse without worry that my cat would try to run off with it again.
I find it rather interesting though… the cats I have gotten so far are the only ones who really have been mice chasers. My purebred Chinchilla Persian had been the one to chase that huge rat that my mom freaked out like mad about. Now my Siamese/Color-point made a kill. Despite that, we have to ally cats in the house and my mom’s purebreds as well. While I know one of our alley cats chased and killed mice in his younger years, he is quite old now and likely wouldn’t do such anymore. The other three… last time they cornered a mouse it was all of them together and they had no idea what to do with it. They just surrounded it out of curiosity. So yeah, I am proud of my cat. He still has instincts.
I do feel sorry for the mouse though. ‘Shame we couldn’t get rid of it and have it still possess its life… I mean, it was just hungry. Still, though… passing of parasites and it was likely full of contaminators…
Oh, well.
As for the lack of updates for a bloody long time… I’ve had nothing much to write about.
Other recent news… Eileen sent a reply email to me recently. Despite she still has problems galore, thus news about her life is not a joyful note… I am very glad to hear from her even if it should only be once a year.

My great aunt died just recently. My mom and I found out last night. She woke me up to tell me. Now all the people who remembered my mother as a child are gone. Now my great aunt who was like a grandmother to me is gone.

Sigh.

I dislike funerals as I dislike weddings. I’m going though because ti is her. Learning from Uncle Benny’s funeral, though… I don’t think I’ll approach the casket. I don’t think I could handle it.

Sigh.

It was around the time I was in seventh grade. It might have even been the end of my sixth grade year. Perhaps it was the summer in between. I just remember it was somewhere within that period of my life. I was writing really crappy poetry then and it might have been before or after “Crawling” by Linkin Park came out. I think it was before the incident with Kennedy that led to my first experience of suicidal thoughts in my seventh grade year. Again, I can’t really pin point. Either way, it happened around ten to eleven years ago… so the memory is a bit foggy.
I’m pretty sure I wrote it all down that day or not long after, but that copy was lost. I think it was kept in the web journal I had before this one… unfortunately all of that writing was lost when the server died. In any case, I realized that I had no written account of that “experience” tonight. Therefore I can only try to piece what I do recall together to the best of my abilities.
I was at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had passed some years before, but I still called it her house and still often do now. My mom and I would often make trips down there. Sometimes my other siblings would be there. I was in really bad shape at the time… I realize now.
It was a normal day, I believe… it was sunny out. The others might have been out. For some reason I was in the room my eldest brother always used. I’m not sure if he was there that time; that might explain my being in there is that he wasn’t and thus I was using the room. Well, in any case I was in there.
Back then there was a small television set and a chair. The chair could spin around. I was sitting in it for some reason or another. I suppose at the time I was lazing about.
Before I knew it though everything went black. I was somewhere else entirely. I was quite coherent as well, wondering how the hell I got there, where was I and so forth. I am not strong in my sensory memory, but I do recall it was like a concrete cellar. It was gray, cold, damp and there was a pungent smell. Like ghostly whispers the dimmest rays of light filtered about, but more like dust rather than light.
The word dank comes to mind… dirty water soaking through the ceiling… green mold growing about corners. I don’t think there were any windows and I am not sure if there was even a way out. I can’t recall if I even wondered how to get out.
If I didn’t, I believe it was due to what I heard. I heard faint breathing and I’m pretty sure I heard the clinking of chains. Straining my eyes, my vision finally adjusted enough to see the outline of a figure ahead.
I went closer. As my vision became better, I began to make out a gray, sickly, emaciated person hung by chains. Manacles, a collar… they tethered the skeletal body to the wall before me. The bones jutted out, the shadows clung to the hollowness of the person.
His head was bent. The chin was most likely touching his chest… It was just hanging limply there. The dark hair was about shoulder length. It was thin, tangled, dirty… It was more like moss, but greasy, clumped and just as limp as the figure.
I recall feeling pity for the poor soul right then.
Then in a blink of an eye the person’s head snapped up. I don’t remember seeing the face… not as a whole. I just knew the features were deeply sunken in. The cheekbones were like caves. The skin was stretched tightly about the skull and the eyes were sunk deep within their sockets. I didn’t notice those so much. I did not notice because within that second I was staring straight into his eyes.
They were wide with blind terror. They were mad. They were brown. They made me realize that I was staring right into my own eyes. This imprisoned, deranged, pitiable creature was me!
The end all seemed to happen in a second. With that overload, I found I couldn’t breath. I jerked forward harshly. With that motion I found myself back in the bedroom and in the chair…
It wasn’t over there though.
I was struggling to breathe. I was gasping for air and wheezing like I sometimes do when under great distress. My heart was pounding furiously, I could hear it pounding through my head and I could feel the muscled organ beating in my chest. I was sweating as thought I had run a mile and my entire body was shaking uncontrollably. I think… I might have even been crying.
I think back then I had compared myself to a frightened rabbit. I also believe at the time I never had been so scared in my life. Those are just feelings I am having right now, however and not lucid recollections.
At that time and to this day I do not know how long I was shaken like that. I do recall trying to stop myself from trembling so harshly though. As I caught my breath more and my pulse began to slow a bit, I finally got a hold of myself and began rubbing my hands roughly up and down my arms to try to compose myself. I wanted my body to stop shaking. I needed to calm down. Thus I focused on that.
When everything did calm down… my breathing, my heart rate and my muscles… I just rested there. I was tired. I’m not sure if that was one of those moments where I felt sick and in need of water, but looking at it… it might have been one of those times.
I’d sometimes get sick from emotional roller coasters like that one. I vaguely recall I used to describe those moments as feeling like a dry leaf curling, withering in an relentless heat of a dying autumn or the deepest depths of hell. I guess that was my version of “I feel like shit.”
I’d always want water at some point during those. I’d feel ill… my stomach would feel gross… So I often just thought, “Water.” If that is how I felt after that, I’m pretty sure that is what caused me to stand up after a while. I did get up once the sweat was dry. Then I trudged tiredly to the door and opened it. As I turned to shut it three words echoed through my mind. Those I still remember distinctly. Sometimes I wonder if I heard it in my mind though. Perhaps it was something deeper. I just remember it sent a feeling through me. It wasn’t cold… but I do know it had this solemn, final tone. The words were, “You are broken.”
I left the room then.
I don’t remember what happened after that. I do know I wondered often if what happened was a dream. I just had trouble believing it was a dream though. It was so real. I have dreams that feel bloody real, but that one… that one wasn’t like the realistic dreams I have. A more insane part of me wondered if I slipped into another place somehow for a brief moment. Another part figures it was a hallucination. Back then I called it a vision though.
I thought… that I got a glimpse of my soul that day. My soul was dying. That is what I took it all to mean. My soul was dying. My spirit was broken. It was chained, forgotten and I didn’t even recognize it. In this… I also realized sometime later… I had no idea who I was. I lost myself. If I died… I would die unknown. I would die unknown because no one really knew who I was… not even myself.
Yes… That was me a decade ago. Why did this memory come up? My mom and brother were talking about dreams, hallucinations and ghosts. I cannot remember the order or how the window opened up to that specific memory… but I told it. I thought I told my mother it before, but she swore I never did. She thinks that back then I apparently had more going on than just my bipolar. She also thinks I was having a moment of disassociation.
On the ride back, she noted that what I talked about made me sound like I underwent something traumatic in my past. I don’t remember. I don’t remember most of my childhood anymore. I don’t really care either.
Anyway, I just thought I’d write it out. I have it somewhat mentioned in a story I wrote, but not detailed or in the way I had experienced it.

That is all.