Today is Boxing day, the day after Christmas 2018. I've taken leave from work to meet my counsellor/case manager from the Anglican Care Centre, formerly known as the Centre for Rehabilitation and Social Service. It provides day rehabilitation for people who have recovered from mental illnesses. We talked for a while about the situation surrounding my suicide attempt after my counsellor read a printout of a few of my blog articles. When I went home to read the news after the meeting, I came across a news article about Japan's refusal to stop hunting for whales, which brought out the musical jukebox in my mind. The song that resounded in my head was the anime movie Mononoke Hime's theme song. As usual, I did not know what song that was when it first pop up in my mind, but I guessed right and through Google, I remembered the movie I watched while I was in NTU almost 20 years ago. It was all about spirits. Princess Mononoke (Mononoke are the bad spirits that cause problems for mankind) lived in an era where there was a great conflict between the humans, animals and gods in Japan. Distress was common among the different life forms then.
In 2011, I was under intense distress and confusion that caused my downward spiral into depression. I had left my job as a senior logistics assistant in 2010 (I believed that I was chased away by my colleagues) and tried to find another job, but to no avail. I could not remember what my resume looked like, but after many months, my father suggested that I join one of his patients, who worked as a security guard. Hence, I signed up for a course at Security Industry Institute near Paya Lebar MRT in Singapore. I completed the course, but confusion set in at the end. I signed up with a security agency, but the first location I was posted to where I worked a few days was too far for me. The agency was kind enough to change my location. The second location in Tampines was closer to my home in Pasir Ris, but my mind started wandering after a few days. Towards the end of my last day there, I had a deja vu moment, where I anticipated the words asked of me by my supervisor there through mobile phone: do I want to continue? Shocked by the deja vu occurrence of the voice in my mind, I said no to my supervisor.
After I left the job, my mind was thrown into confusion. Voices in my head were starting to ask why I couldn't even do a security guard job. I had also tried to join the security company that my father's patient worked for so that I can join him at his work place, but for reasons I can't remember, I failed. Such was the confusion at that time. I started wandering and running around again, but this time, it was only in Pasir Ris. (The reason why I could do so much running was because I had run a half marathon and a full marathon before, and I think I was trying to use running to dispel my confusion, but it didn't work.) The constant question of why a NTU and MBA graduate would end up failing to do a security guard job or even wanting to do a security guard job was constantly on my mind. Voices were berating me for that, condemning me for having failed to see that I was too stupid, especially after the evidence shown in my onset of schizophrenia, where I ran around and took public and private transport all over eastern and northern Singapore in my attempt to pass God's intelligence tests. Basically, I had failed all of God's tests. For more about this, read my first blog post here: The Eternal Mystery - My Onset of Schizophrenia.
One main theme/voice dominated my thoughts: "If I'm too stupid, I should die because that would save a lot of resources. Why should stupid people live? Stupid people are a waste of resources." In short, this is the ruthless economics picture plastered all over my mind, courtesy of my country's (Singapore's) meritocratic (exam smart) ideals as inculcated in schools like Dunman High, my education in economics from my NTU EEE degree, my MBA degree, and the computer games I've played during my schooling years. Courtesy also of my experiences from my onset of schizophrenia in 2006 when I was 30 years old. The schizophrenic thoughts in my mind in 2011 marked my first relapse of schizophrenia, or more precisely, my schizoaffective disorder because I was in a depressed mood at that time.
The local traditional Chinese beliefs in spirits started to pop up in my mind too after I've struggled with my stupidity for some time with feelings of devastation. A voice was telling me to lie down in bed to wait for my spirit to depart because my spirit will eventually die, and a new spirit will enter my body. When that failed to happen, I was told to jump from my home at the 9th storey. Due to my fear of heights, I did not jump. Then the voices/spirits chased me all around Pasir Ris Park, and eventually, I ended up at a 3 storey watch tower where I still could not jump despite raising my right leg onto the railing. That was where my memory ended. I suspect the spirits took full control of me and made me jump from the tower. The next thing I knew when I woke up, I was lying down in a cold dark place. Not knowing where I was, I fell asleep again.
Now, I can safely say that that cold dark place was the ICU department in CGH in Singapore. For more information about my stay at CGH, SACH, and my physical medical conditions, please read my post: Spinal Cord Injury - Neurogenic Bowels and Bladder, and Impotence. Now, with the help of my Google searches about Princess Mononoke, I'm also aware that people who have grown up with one mind, lifestyle and expectation, will never have it easy when required to change "spirits" to do a different job. People lived and died with the spirit they have. For me, my student spirit had to grow up, but it couldn't and didn't. Princess Mononoke had it worse during her times. Animal and forest spirits and their allies were literally trying to stop the advance of human civilisation in Japan then. Now, the world is less fragmented. The human civilisation has won, and now, it's the robots, artificial intelligence and transhumanists who are "advancing". And Japan is still whaling as this is what they claim is part of their culture. Very likely, it's also for food resources.
For me, although reborn a Christian in 2012, my schizophrenia experiences as a failure proven through God's intelligence tests will carry through to my second relapse of schizophrenia in 2013. The problems with my schizophrenia experiences during my onset and first relapse were not just because I was hearing voices, but because the voices were saying things that have unsurpassed rightness at the time of occurrence. These auditory hallucinations had a profound impact on my thought processes. In real life, I remain underemployed doing data entry admin work as of now, but I spend my free time doing research into solar energy and my health problems, both with the potential of having far reaching benefits for the future of human civilisation. In short, I do not want to waste my life and the resources I've eaten and been given. I pray to God that I will be able to bless the world with my research findings.
References:
In 2011, I was under intense distress and confusion that caused my downward spiral into depression. I had left my job as a senior logistics assistant in 2010 (I believed that I was chased away by my colleagues) and tried to find another job, but to no avail. I could not remember what my resume looked like, but after many months, my father suggested that I join one of his patients, who worked as a security guard. Hence, I signed up for a course at Security Industry Institute near Paya Lebar MRT in Singapore. I completed the course, but confusion set in at the end. I signed up with a security agency, but the first location I was posted to where I worked a few days was too far for me. The agency was kind enough to change my location. The second location in Tampines was closer to my home in Pasir Ris, but my mind started wandering after a few days. Towards the end of my last day there, I had a deja vu moment, where I anticipated the words asked of me by my supervisor there through mobile phone: do I want to continue? Shocked by the deja vu occurrence of the voice in my mind, I said no to my supervisor.
After I left the job, my mind was thrown into confusion. Voices in my head were starting to ask why I couldn't even do a security guard job. I had also tried to join the security company that my father's patient worked for so that I can join him at his work place, but for reasons I can't remember, I failed. Such was the confusion at that time. I started wandering and running around again, but this time, it was only in Pasir Ris. (The reason why I could do so much running was because I had run a half marathon and a full marathon before, and I think I was trying to use running to dispel my confusion, but it didn't work.) The constant question of why a NTU and MBA graduate would end up failing to do a security guard job or even wanting to do a security guard job was constantly on my mind. Voices were berating me for that, condemning me for having failed to see that I was too stupid, especially after the evidence shown in my onset of schizophrenia, where I ran around and took public and private transport all over eastern and northern Singapore in my attempt to pass God's intelligence tests. Basically, I had failed all of God's tests. For more about this, read my first blog post here: The Eternal Mystery - My Onset of Schizophrenia.
One main theme/voice dominated my thoughts: "If I'm too stupid, I should die because that would save a lot of resources. Why should stupid people live? Stupid people are a waste of resources." In short, this is the ruthless economics picture plastered all over my mind, courtesy of my country's (Singapore's) meritocratic (exam smart) ideals as inculcated in schools like Dunman High, my education in economics from my NTU EEE degree, my MBA degree, and the computer games I've played during my schooling years. Courtesy also of my experiences from my onset of schizophrenia in 2006 when I was 30 years old. The schizophrenic thoughts in my mind in 2011 marked my first relapse of schizophrenia, or more precisely, my schizoaffective disorder because I was in a depressed mood at that time.
The local traditional Chinese beliefs in spirits started to pop up in my mind too after I've struggled with my stupidity for some time with feelings of devastation. A voice was telling me to lie down in bed to wait for my spirit to depart because my spirit will eventually die, and a new spirit will enter my body. When that failed to happen, I was told to jump from my home at the 9th storey. Due to my fear of heights, I did not jump. Then the voices/spirits chased me all around Pasir Ris Park, and eventually, I ended up at a 3 storey watch tower where I still could not jump despite raising my right leg onto the railing. That was where my memory ended. I suspect the spirits took full control of me and made me jump from the tower. The next thing I knew when I woke up, I was lying down in a cold dark place. Not knowing where I was, I fell asleep again.
Now, I can safely say that that cold dark place was the ICU department in CGH in Singapore. For more information about my stay at CGH, SACH, and my physical medical conditions, please read my post: Spinal Cord Injury - Neurogenic Bowels and Bladder, and Impotence. Now, with the help of my Google searches about Princess Mononoke, I'm also aware that people who have grown up with one mind, lifestyle and expectation, will never have it easy when required to change "spirits" to do a different job. People lived and died with the spirit they have. For me, my student spirit had to grow up, but it couldn't and didn't. Princess Mononoke had it worse during her times. Animal and forest spirits and their allies were literally trying to stop the advance of human civilisation in Japan then. Now, the world is less fragmented. The human civilisation has won, and now, it's the robots, artificial intelligence and transhumanists who are "advancing". And Japan is still whaling as this is what they claim is part of their culture. Very likely, it's also for food resources.
For me, although reborn a Christian in 2012, my schizophrenia experiences as a failure proven through God's intelligence tests will carry through to my second relapse of schizophrenia in 2013. The problems with my schizophrenia experiences during my onset and first relapse were not just because I was hearing voices, but because the voices were saying things that have unsurpassed rightness at the time of occurrence. These auditory hallucinations had a profound impact on my thought processes. In real life, I remain underemployed doing data entry admin work as of now, but I spend my free time doing research into solar energy and my health problems, both with the potential of having far reaching benefits for the future of human civilisation. In short, I do not want to waste my life and the resources I've eaten and been given. I pray to God that I will be able to bless the world with my research findings.
References: