Farewell Hasaam

Countdown: 192

Goal: $7500
Current Funds: $1900
$5600 to go!

Some of that money is almost definitely going into my car. I'm not so keen about that, but Logan's dying I think. Had a nice lil nothing week, filled with silliness, from hanging out at Paul's place doing nothing special to going to Jeremy's 21st which was packed with drama students and the music played all night was almost entirely showtunes and musicals. They were all very nice people, but then, who else would Jeremy be surrounded by? He's such a genuine guy. Oh yeah and I jammed with Neo Sunday night, we practiced Rising Fighting Spirit way too many times, now we can sort of play it okay, but anything we record it on is subsequently destroyed by the higher, slightly more shrill tones Marcello produces. Apparently Neo called his guitar Zion, but he seemed less than enthusiastic about the name =P

Monica and I declared a contest to see who could serve the most annoying, stupid and/or selfish person in a 7hr shift on Friday. She was at an Optus shop in The Glen while I went to Narre Warren. Subsequently I had the best shift I have ever had in Narre Warren after 4 and a half years. I didn't even get so much as a FROWN. I even somehow fixed the horrible printer by myself, which nobody had done before (it's brand new so we'd always have to call tech support a.k.a. Rowland). Everybody was freakishly patient and relaxed no matter what happened. Instead of sooking about how the printer had taken her money and not printed her work, one woman told me "oh don't worry about it there were bound to be teething problems ... " a middle eastern lady whose only words to a coworker had been foreign swears was smiling and saying "thankyou" repeatedly to me after I served her! One guy approached me and asked, "Where's the complaints box? Nah, just kidding, this place is great I love it!" That ACTUALLY happened. It was nuts. Some of them even started going the other direction, sharing heart-warming stories about how their son won an OAM for his work helping the blind and such. It was unbelievable! And so I have decided to publicly declare what I have always in my heart known - I am the Prophet of the Irony Gods.

***

Got in touch with Kris The Awesome German, he studied in China for about 4 years I believe. I asked him about universities in China. He's recommended me a place in Yunnan. Having crunched the numbers I'm guessing to stay there for one semester would set me back around $AUS3500, so I'd bump that up to $4000 to be safe - this includes school fees, accomodation and daily expenses, but not the transport to get there/insurance/travelling after. (And of course it's dependent on the $AUS not getting any weaker or the RMB suddenly getting way too strong ...) I am going to seriously consider this as an option for next year.

Speaking of options for next year, I also mentioned to Kathryn in a bit of an offhand way that I had a desire to do volunteer work. She's also quite keen to check that place out so I might do a little asking around (i.e., Maxine who's going there at the end of this year, Monica who already has - both of whom for volunteer projects, Aunty Shoba/Eugene for some local tips and perhaps to find out if there's anybody I could say hi to over there). We've tentatively agreed to aim for January/Febuary, in which we would like to do some volunteer stuff and then wander around checking the place out.

***

Just last night I watched an Andrew Denton thing where he was interviewing people who suffered from mental illness. Within the first 5 minutes I was taken back to my high school days. These people had heard voices, saw things, suffered from bouts of paranoia and delusion, run around screaming in the street and recieved no help, loathed the side-effects of medication and many aspects of the mental health care sector. The most striking thing for most people who watched this I think, might have been how articulate and self-aware many of these people being interviewed were. These were, of course, people who'd admit that they were sick and needed some sort of help, but to somebody who hadn't given their sort a chance it would have been really eye-opening to listen to them speaking like fairly normal people who'd simply had horrible traumatic experiences, caused by a glitch in their own minds.

I felt like I'd closed my eyes and turned my back on my own experience. Yes, I sorted myself out early, it was only about a year or two that I'd been "sick" and I even managed to keep passing until Year 12 where I got decent marks, with the help of many many wonderful people. I had never become the guy in the street who mumbled about the people that watch him, but for a long time I was worried I might. My absolute number one fear has always been that I might one day end up recieving ECT - shock therapy. I broke down in school many times in Year 10 and a few in Year 11, the biggest being when I ran headfirst into a locker before homeroom and started screaming gibberish at a bully. Then there were these ridiculous rumours about the other crazy stuff I'd supposedly done that went around and gave my paranoia the perfect environment to fester in. I also began to develop theories about extra-dimensional beings who were controlling my life by writing a book about me, all the little dramas that went on were clearly for their entertainment. And I always felt so lonely, I wished I could find somebody who understood what I was going through, or that I could myself understand. Very drama, very emo, yes.

The morning I went crazy in front of everyone, the school called my therapist - they'd already had their eyes on me because the rumours had actually started a little bit before I majorly flipped out. Later I was told after the vice-principal told her what had happened, Jeanette immediately replied, "and I bet he didn't lay a finger on anybody." I found this touching, to say the least. I realised that what was going on with me could have been much worse, while I sometimes freaked out there were still times I had my whole mind, my whole awareness. It was around then I started going to Yun Yang, and I found myself becoming more and more self-aware, and learned about how to issue more self-control and assert my personality over the crazy. I learned not to blame myself for the afflictions I couldn't help, but still take responsibility and work on working with them. It took a very long time to do this properly. My own experience combined with the Buddhist teachings led me to consider many other aspects of the human experience to be "afflictions" too - for example when so-and-so is angry, that's not *who* they are, it's something that's taken over them at that point because they hadn't reached a level of understanding/control which allowed them to control it. Just like I never wanted to go crazy, I doubted people really wanted to be unpleasant for no reason, and so on.

I think as I got better and better at getting people to think of me as "Mykal that weird guy who wouldn't hurt anyone" as opposed to "that nutcase I can't understand", I started to distance myself from these past experiences. I've become less patient and more easily thrown off balance because I'm no longer angry enough to want to prove anything, and I was happy simply thinking I was not so crazy after all, instead of appreciating what that really meant to me when I was trying to convince myself of it.

My experience was really a series of near-misses, I had episodes but every story I've heard about people flipping out has been 100 times worse than mine. I'm in the middle, between the crazies I wished I could know and the normals I wished I could understand. I just got mini-episodes, I suppose. I think that any sort of mood swing that affects a person's judgement/self-control is like an even minier ep. If I can keep that in mind, I'm sure my compassion and respect for others will increase - the fact that I've forgotten this part of my past is probably the reason I've been lacking in it a bit more these days.