Recently, in my half-curious, half-desperate mindset, I’ve been exploring—and forgive me for my ignorance for I am merely a dabbler and/or novice—the neuropharmacology of Complex-PTSD and it’s relationship with schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and phobias. I went in as a patient, and came out a student. But not all that glitters is gold.

On the surface, it seems that learning about the real workings behind your brain disorders is, well, gold, right? No. The more you know might be the more you don’t know. However, knowledge is not power in today’s world. It is entertainment. Here’s why.

 

These vids are educational videos not meant to take the place of medical advice, or so they declare. Fine. Then you get bombarded with medical information. You find out how the lack of melatonin does this and the inability to break it down to serotonin does that. Besides not knowing if I can trust a vid creator that bills itself disowning medical advice to be trustworthy with medical information, there’s something counterintuitive in trusting something that just told you not to fully trust them. Yes, I get it, litigation and all that. Ev’ryboddies diffewent. Ok. So what are they then? Demetertainment? That’s what it amounts to after they’ve hit “upload”.

 

And then there is the very fact that knowledge of the chemical interactions inside of our brains doesn’t do anything but make you sadder because now you know about it—but you can’t do anything about it. . Knowledge isn’t power to the average viewer as it illuminates why you’re sick, and knowing all that information doesn’t necessarily change your course or outcome of illness. It’s not even medically certified advice!

 

It’s like moving from town to city, trying to outrun your past. Well, friend, sorry to tell you this, but you just moved all your emotional baggage with you and maybe added more. A fresh start just amounts to a whole new crowd who dislike for the same reasons the old crowd had.

 

There are times when you need to stay put, cut the toxicity out of your thinking, and do the hard thing. Sit with yourself. Learn to feel comfortable with your own company. Knowing yourself for yourself is better than depending on or codependency with someone who is only human. If you can’t fully look into the mirror because of trauma, try your shadow. It is softer, more flattering, and easier to assimilate.

 

I’m sorry to say that my experience with mental health videos have been ultimately negative, as much as I liked the personalities of the creators behind them. Power is the ability to change. Knowledge that doesn’t lead to change is weak and not power at all. It is medicinal active ingredients that have been neutralized. It is ineffectual and ultimately debilitating because it eats up your nervous energy, your time, your self-image, and gives you the false sense of a solution when, sadly, it is just another online vehicle to sell you something. Don’t buy it. You deserve better than that.

©️2021 Vic Young All Rights Reserved

 

Beauty Caught

I spent a lifetime chasing beauty

All this time, Beauty eluded me.

I thought I could capture her in a phrase,

Or in a cantabile dolce of one of Mozart’s finest

Beauty remained an an enigma

I would daydream of catching her and holding on

Fascinated with what lay beneath the layers of the golden orb

That I could unravel time, distance, secrets of worlds lost,

And all the mysteries of this life and beyond

Only I found, as I gently peeled back leaf after gilded leaf

That the centre was leaden, hollowed-out ebony,

And within it laid this mortal coil.

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

It’s not like I wasn’t trying.

It’s just that if by the age of two

You only knew the clashing voices of loved ones

And the bleakness of unavailable

Hearts,

You settle for the most ridiculous of childhood

Pretend games.

So bleakness curled its tail around me

Until, one day

My father brought home

A record.

It wasn’t any old record

It was a gift for me

That he had scoured the city to find

On the recommendation of a friend.

My father, the tone-deaf, practical workaholic

Bought me a music record Of a pianist

But all I heard was the piano

And of it being as exquisite as a father’s intention

For his daughter I was simply unaware

Of the trap I was falling into

For at the tender age of three

Beauty entered my life

And I knew her by name.

Since then, I have been seeking beauty in all things

And whenever I’ve had to shun it

I become bitter and cynical

Wishing ill upon the many enemies accrued

And wishing that I could just die

But after each drought

I would learn that Beauty never left me

In a way, I always knew she was there

Patiently waiting, alluringly

Like a monument who never ages

But who dares you to look again

Upon her perfect, fascinating face

That needs no jewel to crown

But beckons you to hope anew.

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Thought I’d dredge my poetry collection for some of my faves. Enjoy.

In the beginning

I had all the time in the world

But didn’t want it.

Time is not all that

It’s added up to be.

By the age of seven,

I faced suicide.

At twelve, I realized I could never

Be a good mother,

So Time grabbed me by the womb

And stood still.

At twenty, I fell in love.

For the first time,

Time didn’t matter.

At twenty-one, my lover

Left me to chase his old flame,

Once too spiritual for him,

But, you see, I had brought him

Back

Into the fold,

So, now, he thought he had a better chance.

Time turned black and white, green, and red.

Ten years of waiting and being taunted.

Psychotic church leaders

Who meted out their dole of destruction.

Time was a cheat.

But the worst was the lie from someone

Whom you love

Who once was supposed to have

Loved you back,

Replying when asked,

What helps?

“Time heals.”

©2016-2021 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Anger is a miserable houseguest. When it wants to pull you to participate, it does not take much for it to convince. When it won’t leave you alone, it clings like an annoying rival who has used you for its stores of energy and display, leaving you depleted, self-loathing, and frustrated.

Of all of these, the worst feeling is frustration. You have tried to placate it. You have jumped through all the hoops until you were depleted. You have self-sacrificed like a good martyr hoping to win it over while risking your own health. Ultimately, she is a troll. A snake. A crocodile that cries.

In the end, they get under your skin. And like any decent human being, you try meditating. It is pure rubbish. Talk to a Buddhist, and he will wish a vengeful karma on someone he feels has shafted him. Talk to a Christian, and they’ll invariably get fed up with your problems. Talk to a 14-year-old, and she makes Anger look like a sissy. Such are the conditions we humans find ourselves confined to.

Is there any respite? I cannot find it. I have been alive now, not enjoying any moment of it, for half a century. I have a lot of negative self-talk. I have become spiteful, petty, and deeply vengeful. I have become that ball of Anger–that wretched, infiltrating house-pest. I have lived with it for so long, I’m ready to strangle the people now long gone while they turn in their graves.

These are dark thoughts. I am sorry I exposed this side of myself and yet how can I not? If I do not write these things, even should nobody else read them, I am bottling up hate for another season and it will become a poisonous brew. I would rather you normaloids hate what I write and have it strike a chord with 0.0001% of the population than that I never, in my twisted but sensible irony, let Anger go.

A World Without Poetry

 

What is this world

Where we have lost our poetic gifts, the bone

Set to bring us higher

We are lost

Like a dog that no longer knows how to please

And takes no pleasure in its owner’s benevolence

What is this world if

By chance or by design

We cannot transform our rage

With the use of

Words

majestic, magical, magnanimous

Words

Plucked and carefully, lovingly cradled

From the tempest and tarantella that

Only humans

Can, at once, feel and craft,

Far, far away from the fleet of baboons

Tapping furiously away

In the random attempt to reach

Shakespeare’s brow.

 

©️Vic Yeung 2021 All Rights Reserved

It is a universally recognized truth that when it comes to any schizophrenic, at any point of their life, at any given moment, under any institution except a psych hospital or jail, that “perhaps, they just shouldn’t have been there.”

 

This is true, despite tiered governmental policies and incentives towards “disability inclusion” that is done as more of an opportunistic, “nebular” inclusion than a solid, policy and vision driven plan of action. Some things one just never gets around to, y’know eh?

 

Not good enough. But alas, we ARE talking about the mentally ill—underrepresented, unemployable, incorrigible, leeching, bottomless bottom-feeders. Nobody really has the time for them. It’s difficult to argue with that. If I were a normaloid, and had a life with a lot going for me, to stop and understand how the mental patient’s mind works would be psycho-sociological, financial suicide. Some things are best left alone to themselves.

 

Some things are unsolvable and thus left to themselves. Mental illness seems to one of them. Depending on if we can keep the conservative elements out of government, there may be modest or even radical changes in how we compensate the mentally ill. But see, what the liberal element cannot achieve, though they are closer at the federal level to achieving it now than any point in Canadian history, is full inclusion. That, I believe, only the socialist elements can dream of in their philosophy. Liberals, if given a chance, can effect powerful changes of policy; but, they fly the normaloid flag. In other words, they are not misfits, whereas Canadian socialists are. Only misfits can understand the plight of the stigmatized and vulnerable. Middle-of-the-road politicians are doing their best, they are doing good, but the good they do, unfortunately, is still topical and cosmetic change. The far right would simply cut the mentally ill off half to two-thirds of their benefits and commit the so-called functional ones to what would be effectually forced labour. Deep, heartfelt change is not achievable with halfway measures and a modicum of compassion, regardless of the deeply moving, momentary thoughts and prayers that never resonated in the sanctuaries of any Southern Baptist congregations I knew of anyway.

 

The key phrase you hear, from Standford to UBC, of suicide victims and mentally ill students who get victimized, is a euphemistic “They were individuals who probably shouldn’t have been there.” The schools here set up departments to handle such known cases and monitor the rest who report honestly that they are mentally ill. Invariably, when things go south, as is often the case as progress cyclically dips and rises, the person in question must go. In short, it’s not the normaloid’s problem anymore.

 

This theme occurs on Facebook groups, too. Art instructors running classes online through livestreams or patronage sites will thwart your attempts to be included. Some will bait you into wanting to join their “friendliest, secret Facebook group they know of online”, that they emphatically state is open to all, even making a patron sign-up list, only to openly strike you off their enrolment list in the full view of all the other patrons. Others rant on in their livestreams, “Like, if anyone knows about mental illness, it’s ME. MY father was a horrible, untreated, paranoid schizophrenic. He shouldn’t have had kids. I have nothing against schizophrenics, mind you. I just wish they’d build a huge, luxury hotel resort and put all the mentally deranged people there.” This art instructor might as well as said “and let it run derelict, lock them up and throw away the key because, frankly nobody wants to deal with them and I rant on the behalf of all normal society…” She lost my vote of the Almighty Dollar when she proved that underneath that 34-year-old petite blond shell was a 14-year-old Valley Girl refusing to grow up and get over herself. Look around, kiddo. There just might be more to the world than you and your art channel that doubles as a quasi-soap-box-groupie-worship type thingy. (And yes, I can say such things here since this is my channel, after all.). 🙂

 

In such a case, she might as well rant on behalf of normal society. Most normaloids prove irresponsible, cowardly, and egotistical. Do we herein give up the fight? I think in that Scottish play, the titled, Shakespearean Lady says it best: “Nay, if you do not care for me, I do not care for myself.” ‘Nuff said.

©️Vicky Yeung 2021 All Rights Reserved

Coleman ‘should be embarrassed’ for comparing social assistance to Third World incomes

Rich Coleman reveals true face of a government that has failed to help the poor

In case you lose the links, here are the PDF files of those articles for posterity.