The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Orion's picture

    Monsters Inside Of Us

    By Orion on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 2:58am |

    This is another piece about mental illness. I have gotten a mixed reception from all of you here. This makes alot of people very uncomfortable. The last thread about mental illness did really well and I really learned from all of your stories - however - I know from experience posting here that the subjects I pick aren't what some want. I've been encouraged to post here and wouldn't do so if I thought I was imposing.

     If this makes you uncomfortable, please just skip over. The subject is complex and needs to be discussed out of necessity for what it is.

    After the massacre in Connecticut occurred, an article was released called "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother:"

    At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.

    The article angered some friends of mine - who said the mother was exploiting her child by comparing him to a mass murderer of children. The child in question was really violent, according to the article, enough so that it frightened her mother in to thinking he might one day murder her.

    I got sent the article by a friend with the attachment "I know this isn't what you want to hear right now but you should read this." My family is filled with violence and I'm no exception. I have never actually hurt anyone but I sure as hell have threatened it. It's usually been brought by anxiety, frustration and miscommunication - when you don't know what to say or feel cornered, actions often take over. My name is also Michael and I have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.

    Someone in the SSRI support group said, in hushed conversation, that "any" of us could be one of these mass shooters. I found that a strange statement since, even at our worst most of us would not be capable of exploding the way some of these people have (James Holmes killed a dozen people but literally shot at 70 people. 70 people.).

    It was easy to try to blame things on the antidepressant medications I took but I recently suffered an episode where I sounded alot like Michael. My sister had come in to town from Texas and wanted to see me. It got bad right off the bat.

    My sister had immediately launched in with "God, you look depressed. I don't want to be around you like this." I responded that I had tried to look my best. My life was extremely chaotic. "You're going to die if you go around depressed like that," she followed up. Perhaps normal people don't get angry at comments like that - I had been through hell and managed to get an apartment, start a support group with 100 members and join a church. Apparently none of that mattered.

    As we past by a local elementary school, my sister launched in to not being able to go the school she wanted because she "wasn't black" and was "too white."

    "This is bullshit. I don't want to be around you or this family," I said. I was really pissed off and a general anger towards my family as a whole was centering in on my sister. "You need to pull over the car."

    "Are you crazy? You're going to jump out?"

    "No, just pull over the damn car. Leave me the f***alone!" The blood pressure was up and I could see a man across the street staring at us. This same thing had happened over and over and over over the years and it was hard to see which part was my fault and which was theirs. After running it by another family member, they told me that hostility may come out because they are afraid for me. I had certainly acted really crazy when my life had turned to total chaos.

    As humans, we are obviously not angels and the stress of life can easily turn us in to things we aren't. Times this stressful can certainly make the demonic side come out easier than in more sane times. Guns have been talked about alot on this website and I have contributed the factor of drugs. There is obviously much more - it was actually the first time I had seen my sister in years. There was an obvious disconnect and perhaps that was my fault. A social disconnect on a massive scale might have to do with all these mass shootings.

    I apologized to my sister. Even if she had been offensive, I had no right to let a monster out like that. None of us do.

    Comments

    Keep on posting. 


    by Flavius on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 9:46am

    Conversations with family can get very ritualistic. By this I mean that they go the way they go because that's the way they've always gone, often despite our best efforts to make them go differently. (Just try changing the words or tune of a song you know very well for a sense of the problem. :^)

    You and your sister tried, and you can try again, maybe on a lighter or more social level, or for a very brief time. One of the great revelations of my life was that sometimes, changing bad family dynamics doesn't have to involve a bunch of deep conversations that invariably go to a dark place--it can be done with a light touch. Sometimes small talk and a smiling goodbye can go a long way.

    (You were smart to take the high road and apologize, even if your sister did start out by tweaking you.)


    by erica20 on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 11:46am

    That is good to hear. Unfortunately, in my family, the ritual is either silence or screaming at one another.


    by Orion on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 4:36pm

    Orion, your episode with your sister isn't so far off from normal family dynamics.  She didn't know how to handle your depression (or the new you) and you had your feelings hurt and lashed out.  You handled it well--not at all like a monster.  Good for you.

    Keep on posting.  Those who want to read what you write will and those who don't won't.


    by Ramona on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 1:08pm

    Yes, this makes sense. I've had the kitchen sink thrown at me and kitchen sinks weren't really being thrown at me as a child. I think many of them figured I was going to commit suicide - and I certainly thought about it when things got really dark - and I imagine the hostility had much to do with that.


    by Orion on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 9:46am

    In regards to your saying: "Perhaps normal people don't get angry at comments like that", I think it would be weird if you weren't pissed.

    I don't think that my own awkward attempts at establishing boundaries for myself are as monstrous as when I punish people because it settles some score I am keeping in my heart. It certainly can get confusing when life mixes those things together but the spirit of those impulses are different and it is important to distinguish them in oneself and others. For me, the job of sanity is to resist the immersion that conflation promises.

    Forgiving oneself for some things cannot help but make other things even heavier than they were before. I agree with Buber who said that recognizing what can't ever be made right again is the source of the determination to do the right thing somewhere else.

    I agree with you when you say: "A social disconnect on a massive scale might have to do with all these mass shootings." But what is the true point of departure? How will the "connected" society be understood as a starting point? For example, Baudrillard would frame the answer much differently than Leo Strauss. I don't think there is a "normal" that is self evident. That isn't to say the same thing as denying its existence. But it isn't just laying on the ground, ready to be picked up by anybody wandering by.

     


    by moat on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 9:32pm

    Whatever normal is, having family members who tell you you're going to die the first minute you see them isn't it. She isn't the first to do that. They're lunatics.


    by Orion on Thu, 01/17/2013 - 8:56am

    I didn't mean my comment about normalcy to be in any way an opinion about what was happening in your family. I was only thinking about the dynamics of taking our personal experiences as a bellwether or model of society at large. After all, I was encouraging you not to interpret your desire to protect yourself as something monstrous.


    by moat on Thu, 01/17/2013 - 9:36am

    The big machine... 200 cubic miles of Klystron relays...
    enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses...
    operated by remote control. Morbius, operated by
    the electromagnetic impulses...
    of individual Krell brains.

    To what purpose?

    In return, that machine would instantaneously project solid matter...
    to any point on the planet, in any shape or color they might imagine...
    for any purpose, Morbius!

    Creation by mere thought.
    Why haven't I seen this all along?

    Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger...
    their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

    The beast. The mindless primitive.
    Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.

    And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious...
    had access to a machine that could never be shut down.

    The secret devil of every soul on the planet...
    all set free at once to loot and maim...
    and take revenge and kill!

    My poor Krell! After a million years of shining sanity...
    they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 9:49pm