Paranoid schizophrenia is a terrible thing.
Or--cocaine is a hell of a drug.

ah,the days of being in a relationship with a woman,who loved painkilllers with her jug wine.

who would wake me up in the dead of the night,using the super heated metal tops of a bic lighter on the bottom of my feet (those are called "smileys" for those who do not know) to scream at me about some girl who had the audacity to look my way at target,because 3:30am is the time to find out if i am having sexual thoughts about random women.

or an earlier girlfriend whose father was a prominent artist in the country and was holding a weekend jazz festival.i had a customer who had cerebal palsy,and one leg had been amputated,whose boyfriend had just broke up with her and she was a wreck.

so i had this bright idea! why doesn't this poor emotional wreck of a woman come to the jazz festival of my girlfriends dad? that will get her mind off things right?

but,having a second person accompany made me a little late.so when i finally showed up,my girlfriend was already half in the bag,and mad.i tried to explain and introduce her to mary,the heartbroken girl.

and my girlfriend broke my nose with a bottle of michelob.i do not think she cared that mary was heart broken,and an utter wreck in need of human company.i could be wrong,this is just a guess,but the bleeding from my broken nose may have been a strong indicator.

or how about the time i was counseling a long time friend,who had pulled a midnight move out to escape a man who had basically had her trapped in a spare room,chaining her to the wall.that man had gone as far as severing her achilles tendons,after her first attempt to escape,and this woman suffered from a severe case of PTSD.

now she did form an almost childlike bond to me.maybe because i had offered her the first taste of true compassion,and offered her safety and comfort,and allowed her to talk the poison and bile out that had been building inside her for over three years.

but her attachment to me,which was to be expected,was not viewed favorably by my girlfriend.i spent a lot of time and attention in drawing this broken and damaged young woman to feel safe,and to begin to feel human again(which infuriated my girlfriend).my patio was always filled with friends,artists and people of interest,and i did my best to bring a normalcy to this young womans life in order to help her acclimate,and to feel human again.

and my girlfriend would come home,get drunk,and start to whisper the most vile.and disgusting things..not about this young woman,but about me.

which,of course,if you understand the mentality of an abuse victim.especially one who had suffered such as she had.any criticism,or perceived threat to the person who had (in their mind) saved them,will create incredible anger and anxiety.

so because of my girlfriends irrational jealousy of this woman,and in her drunken selfishness,she went out of her way to make this woman feel as uncomfortable,and as unsafe (the exact opposite of what i was trying to do).so much so that the young woman...who didn't want to be a burden,or affect my life in a negative way...left my home,and wrote me she would never come back,because she loved me and didnt want to cause problems.

two weeks later she was found dead in motel room.over dose of piankiller and xanax...and wrists slashed to ribbons.

or how about the time one of my girlfriends broke three of my ribs,because i was being kind to a waitress?

or the time another girlfriend stabbed me,because while she was unhappy with our relationship,she could not abide me talking to anyone who owned a vagina.in this case a fellow artist i was collaborating with,and who happened to be not only an amazing human being but beautiful as well.

or that one time,when i broke up with a girl,because it simply was not working out and she repeatedly rammed her ford fairmont station wagon into my brand new firebird?

oh..the stories i can tell about all my wonderful relationships,and the women i have shared portions of my life with.i could write a book...

and then i watch this video,and i am overcome with an urge to drive cross country to the creators home,walk inside,grab him by the ankles and crag him outsides....and beat him senseless.

because he is coming from a false premise.
he is implying the that the benefits of relationships outweigh he selective memory our brains create when reliving our moments of singlehood.

when the reality is this:as long as you have friends,who love and accept you for who you are,you are never actually single.you are surrounded and loved by an extended family.

i do not need a girlfriend.
i do not want a girlfriend.
i am not interested in getting married.
and as i have revealed here,i would prefer some memories to remain buried under the much happier and adoring memories of my actual friends who put up with my eccentricities,and my overall oddness,rather than deal with a woman who is smitten with the ideas fed to them by institutions,and periodicals such as comsopolitian and vogue.

though,ironically,i have two ex girlfriends living in my home as i write this.
one is a former porn star,and current stripper who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia,and is a recovering addict.

while the other i had to go do a midnight rescue from a place where she was renting a room,but the house was junkie house,and she is a recovering addict as well (and they also kept stealing everything from her).she has bought a house,but it needs work and that work is taking fooooooorever.

and BOTH of these women still harbor some residual feelings towards me.even though i have been quite clear,open and honest that i have ZERO interest in rekindling anything,with either of them,but that hasn't stopped them from being all catty with each other,and causing drama,and complaining about the smallest,tiniest and most ridiculous of things to bitch about.

at first i tried to play referee.
i did my best to help everyone get along,until i realized they both had no interest in getting along.they wanted to outdo the other in order to get my attention.

which is just.....dumb..but anyways,my new way of handling their insipid complaints is always this response:i don't care.

and it seems to work beautifully.

so there you have my story,or at least part of it.
and i have to say...this guy is kinda full of shit.

for those of you happily married,with a great partner,i salute you.good for you,and i mean that.

but for me?
no thanks.i am good.

Thank you for sharing this in that awful thread. I have someone very close to me that has paranoid schizophrenia and a lot of the problem was that they were born in a time where the culture just wanted to lock them up and call them crazy. Luckily now, it's much better but still not ideal. There is still a negative stigma attached to mental illnesses.

Anyway, I'm trying to avoid the thread for now as I don't want to get too personal on VS these days. I just thought I should let you know that your comments meant something to some stranger on the internet.

Have a good day!

1. Can dance.
2. Can’t sing.
3. Loves pizza.
4. Hates pasta.
5. Likes the frigid cold.
6. Is missing Montana.
7. Resents Central Tennessee.
8. Has a crush on Canada (Alberta and BC I’m looking at you…)
9. Grew up around boys.
10. Strangers talk to me more often than my family does.
11. Rescues animals.
12. I Have killed animals.
13. I Have killed animals against my will.
14. Doesn’t like pork.
15. Eats turkey bacon.
16. Was almost married at 19 (dodged a bullet).
17. At one point was probably the only person in eastern Montana to have blue hair.
18. Used to play the flute and piccolo.
19. Got my training license at 14 (my real one at 15)
20. Once forgot my own birthday. (My sweet 16)
21. Used to be able to bench my own body weight but now I’m a wimp/heavier.
22. My mother was very artistic (she could draw or sculpt anything from her head). She didn’t do anything productive with her talent. She also has paranoid schizophrenia.
23. My dad worked for the railroad he was bipolar and “went crazy”. Living on the streets until he was ironically mugged, left on the train tracks to die (being ran over by a train).
24. My dad’s father also worked for the railroad…he's my real dad..(not in a biological sense)
25. My redneck neighbors really are that loud.

Paranoid schizophrenia, anyone?

Yes, DEFINITELY *lies. I was going to say * wtf instead of worldaffairs in the submission I was about to put up, but otherwise, you got it.

I found it via RPS:

"The shooting has thrown everyone - even more than any terrible killing in a high school - because Steven Kazmierczak doesn’t fit into any of the easy stereotypes for those who might usually perform such a crime. From the scraps of information we have, it seems he had recently stopped taking psych meds, and taking into account his actions, would indicate paranoid schizophrenia. Obviously this is speculation. But intriguingly, it’s speculation based on facts, rather than randomly attributing a cause de jour in order to propogate someone’s personal agenda.

The opening question (once we get past the entertaining moment of the anchor accidentally sharing everyone’s wishes):

“What does it tell you about this guy, the suspect, that he’s twenty-seven years old - he’d already graduated - not an 18 year-old, a 17, 18, 19 year-old student currently enrolled?”

Thompson’s reply:

“Well, we find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started, for example, playing violent video games you can, er, more likely copycat the behaviours in the games.”

The rest of his speech is the usual nonsense and undemonstrable claims about a connection between previous high school shootings and video games, but it’s this first sentence that merits the most attention.

Thompson’s a lawyer, so I’m not going to say he’s lying. But I will say what he says makes no sense in any possible way. Even if there were these “brain scan studies”, how exactly would a functional MRI demonstrate the likelihood of a “copycat” shooting? Is there an animated picture of a little pixel gunman firing a weapon on the scans? It’s gibberish. It’s the sort of woo-woo nonsense you expect to hear from someone trying to explain how their crystals prevent cats from being afraid of ghosts. “Harvard you say?! Gosh, that sounds scientific!” It’s embarrassing.

The most frustrating thing about this man’s escapades is it obfuscates what might be a very serious subject. What if violent videogames could have a negative correlative effect on young people? This is something we would surely like to know, and see studied rationally. People like Thompson (who encourages far greater feelings of violence in me than any “training simulator” like, er, Counter-Strike: Half-Life ever has) stifle this discussion through their sensationalist bullshit.

To conclude, I’d like to transcribe his last sentence.

“One of the things personally disturbing for me dist, including the fact that we have a community now of survivors and victims’ families all across the country like at Perduco who go through the trauma of these type events with the families who are, uh, most immediately hit in this way most recently because they themselves have endured these type situations is the, um… err, the… uh, fact that, you’ve got, um, uhhh, uh, I wrote a, I’m sorry I lost my train of thought, because, uh, but, uh, I wrote a book called Out Of Harm’s Way for a Chicago publisher in which, the, the only chapter they deleted was a fictionalised of, of one of these incidents in which I I said that a kid should walk onto a stage in an audatorium and open fire with a shotgun and they dist they deleted it because it was too disturbing.”

“Campus shooting expert” indeed."

That's really sad. The poor guy is totally freaked out. He's either in the middle of some psychotic episode (read paranoid-schizophrenia), or he's trying to pull some kind of Andy Kaufman stunt. I think it's probably the former.