Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Soundtrack: Flyleaf “Fully Alive”, “Perfect”, and “Cassie”

   Colors, muted by the cover of darkness, drifted in front of my mind’s eye. Swirling, they surrounded me. The midnight music swelled and I was swept away.

   Penetrated, perforated, saturated. I became all of these as the music sped the colors, taking me deeper and deeper, touching that place inside that has always terrified.

   Radioactive, I once called myself, because of this place. Even that word, however, suggests light, or an explosion. This place, this feeling, this emotion, it is much more muted than that. It is an undercurrent, at best, a presence built of absence. Noisy silence. Darkest light. The denseness of a black hole, with the knowledge that “hole” is the wrong word. A star that grew too big to let light escape.

   The anger resides here, passing over the event horizon. That emotion, so new, is possibly the only one that can escape, but escape insinuates a being apart. This denseness consists of the anger, of the darkness in my mind and the spaces between my cracked psyche. Every time my life has shattered, this dense darkness has grown. This dense fire, flaming, raging through my heart.

   Where did it come from? Caves. The ultimate darkness of caves; The pressure of the earth above, and the earth below, and the earth all around. It’s formed from the echo of water, more a memory than reality, long lost by the thirsty roots. The strange formations of mineral and magic give it power, dwelling within the places where only the most basic of living forms exist. This dark fire comes from that ultimate purity.

   It whispered through my head during sleepless months, found that hole carved from childish dreams deep inside, naive hopes and trust, and set itself to stay. It is now part of me, the purity, the darkness that has form; That lightless fire – burning cold, comforting pain, unseen light.

   When all was stripped away, when the final fragments of my glass frame were taken and shattered, this denseness remained. This is what I have become, what I always have been behind the mask.

   You can’t break fire, for it has no form. You can’t extinguish it, if it has fuel. You can’t control it, for it is unpredictable. You can use it, but it remains its own master. Try, any of it, and you’ll get burned, unrepentantly.

Defenses

So, how do I deal with the demons? Well, I'd like to start off with a little bit of background. Whenever I see the demons, I'm usually in a certain state of mind. It's this feeling of paranoia, where the slightest little thing can scare me. It's different from roller coaster scared, it's closer to like a panic attack, but more subdued, more a generalized feeling.

If you're wondering what this feeling feels like, watch the Exorcist. Needless to say, I can't watch movies of that type of genre - a strange thing moving in the background of the screen is just too much like real life for me. So, that's one way I defend myself - I avoid situations that put me into that state. Additionally, if I start to feel that state coming on, finding friends in a well lit area really helps, and changing the subject of whatever conversation is going on to more light-hearted and happy things can help too. 

Also, there are certain things - music, mostly, or character ideas - that approach that feeling, but don't force me into it. I immerse myself in these songs or characters, and in so doing, the paranoia gets pushed back in the long run. It's like a balloon - It started off really small, but in listening to this music and playing these characters I've pushed against the walls so much that now my balloon is very big, and very few situations can force me into that state. For example: Our current D&D campaign features the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The DM's (Dungeon Master's) description of the demons are spot on, and it can get creepy sometimes, but we play in a very well lit area, with a lot of friends around, and the DM is very good at keeping drama off the table and making the play environment safe and friendly. We're all friends, and having the chance to kill the big scary demons with my friends around me in such a safe environment has really been helping me out. Kind of like exposure therapy!

So, in a sense, my first defense is prevention. Inevitably, however, that state can seize me, especially when I'm tired and sleeping and subjected to the whims of my subconscious. 

I firmly believe in spiritual power. The Chinese call it Chi, new age psychics call it an Aura, sometimes you can think of it as your Soul, or the Holy Spirit. Growing up, I always felt safe in the woods, and the "color" of the forest, to me, is a dark green. I developed a spiritual shield - when I would start to get scared at night, I would "pull" the dark green energy from the trees into myself, call upon God's white light, then push out that energy into a ball around me, using God's light to fortify the outside into a hard shield, and filling the inside with the healing energy. The end color would be the color of sunlight through leaves, and no demon could get past my shield. Sometimes I'd have to do this several times before the paranoid feeling would fall away, and other times I'd have to push out my shield to encompass my entire room. Eventually, I learned how to separate this shield from myself and attach it to other people - say if I knew they were having a hard time or I was afraid that they were weakened and the demons might come after them. When I got married and moved into my house, I extended this shield to encompass my entire property, and left it up indefinitely. This is a passive ability once you set it up, for the most part, but in order to keep it active you need a renewable source for your energy - I'm not sure if you noticed, but I pulled both components from external sources. Our house is in the middle of a city, and it's been several years since I was able to immerse myself in nature on a daily basis, so that's probably one of the reasons it failed me.

Back in college, I took a class that taught us how to go caving. We had feild trips over some weekends where we'd go to a cave and crawl around. It was a bad time for me in my life, emotionally (looooong story), but every time we went to those caves I felt comforted. At some point, in the darkness, probably while moving my light over some Gypsum crystals, I found a strange dark fire. Back in classes, I started doodling this fire, and I noticed that the creepy music that I'd listen to or characters that I"d play would feel like that fire. I didn't think much of it until last October, when I overdosed on Xyrim because my doctor wasn't listening to me. At that point, my shield was stripped away, stopped keeping the demons at bay, and they raided my house. I still don't remember a lot about that time, but in between the cracks of my sanity I felt that fire. As the "medicine" got out of my system and I returned to myself, I discovered that the fire remained, and actually started helping me with the demons.

I've come to understand that that fire is Angelic - angels in the bible, are bad asses and terrifying to demons and humans alike. Furthermore, this fire is not black, as it looks like, but ultraviolet - a wavelength of color that humans don't have receptors for, but that insects and some other animals do. That's why it LOOKS black. It's dense, powerful, and constantly moving and changing. It feeds off of anger, an emotion that I was previously having trouble controlling (My father was mentally and emotionally abusive - it's a long story), and can help cut through a cataplectic attack rather effectively. 

Now, when I'm laying in my bed and I get an image of those demons, my fire ignites and acts like a spear to impale the demon. Then it burns, and I'm safe again. It's... gratifying. I'm a survivor, I'm a warrior, and eventually the demons will learn that I'm no easy target for them to play with and scare. 

Imipramine

My current medication. It is "old-school," brought back specifically because of Narcolepsy patients, so said my doctor. It is a tricyclic antidepressant. This class arose from anti-histamines, and thus has such properties (I have noticed that I've been somewhat less itchy since taking it - I'm horribly sensitive to everything and even need to use a special shampoo, conditioner, and soap or else I itch like the dickens! Perhaps some of my "allergies" will ease off?), and has been almost completely replaced in recent years with Seritonin-reuptake inhibitors due to a "decrease in side effects." It's supposed to increase restless-leg syndrome, if I have it. I HAVE been twitching rather violently when laying down since starting it, but the twitches have been gradually calming down; and I'm getting used to them, so they're bothering me less. Also, bananas help to calm that down, as well. One side effect that I forgot to mention is dry mouth.

Personally, dry mouth doesn't bother me - Cytalphram, which I had been on for around 3 years, causes worse dry mouth than Imipramine does currently. I'm used to sleeping with a dry mouth, and it's even cleared out my sinuses, so I sleep even better and wake up with less of a headache in the morning. ^-^ It's uncomfortable until I get a glass of water, but since I drink all day, anyway, it's really not that bad. 

Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imipramine

Be sure to check out the "tricyclic antidepressant" link within the article - It's interesting once you get to the "history" section. 

Submitted by hawkeykins

Dream-thought

This sweet torture - I am lost on a cliff of profound understanding, caught between action and inaction, and trapped in a reality that is not my own. My words are my weapon, to strike out at this tenuous dream, to rent it to peices. Do I dare, though, loose the thread of this insurmountable struggle?!