Grad School Deadline Approacheth

My Grad School deadline is coming up, eeeee! I still need one more letter of recommendation and I’m not sure I’ll get it from this person, aside from that I don’t know who else to ask for a letter from. It’s such a different direction to go into compared to a BFA in film and video. Maybe people are worried I’m giving up on the film side to go in this direction, but I’m not, this is just a fun program that can help me achieve a goal. I really do want to reform/abolish psychiatry and the treatment of individuals in psychological distress. There is a profound lack of empathy towards the mad, and it’s evolved into a deadly system of force and punishment supported by the very people around the individual in crisis. I intend to set out a new methodology for treating people without the use of force and without the use of medication. The adversarial nature of psychiatry keeps people from reaching out for help, because it is simply the laziest way of “helping” people. No one really seems to care about their friends or family enough to sit with them, or to admit that abuse has caused distress. And people are simply too stupid to appropriately question what is being sold as science. The scientific methodology in psychiatry is woefully lacking in intellectual rigor. They still talk about fuckin’ Oedipus and Electra complexes, even though we know Freud only came up with those theories to explain why all his female patients were reporting incest.

I sometimes wonder if Kurt Cobain would still be alive if he hadn’t been threatened with psychiatric incarceration. We take the best and brightest who are in the throes of existential despair and place them on intellectually damaging drugs which make them conform only because then they truly are operating at the same intelligence as the rest of the world. It’s sick and it’s destroying our societies potential for truly revolutionary humane and aware co-existence. I’m still sad that I lost my brain for three and a half years simply because someone gave me too much antidepressants.

Mental Illness is not a life sentence. We take an event and turn it into an identity, we damage people enough that we can turn them into chronic patients, always dependent on psychiatry and never given enough free reign to heal themselves. We punish those who don’t conform, even though they have potential for greatness.

So yeah, uh, grad school. Well, I have at least three concepts I am going to be working with in my thesis, and I’m looking forward to sitting around with people who are all thinking at the same level. I also think since it is a disability related program, my bad marks for two years won’t be such an issue in getting accepted, hopefully. And if I do really well in this course, I can use this GPA towards the PhD in The History of Consciousness program at Santa Cruz. I am also hoping to have at least one or two films, features, out by the time I apply for my PhD.

I am also thinking more about what lengths I may have to go to in order to survive a Level 1 society. Already I know there are times I have to shut up or I can get into trouble, but those are people I usually stay away from. Anyone who doesn’t believe me when I say something is usually gently excommunicated from my life, because I just don’t have time for them. I’m concerned about my family, you can only open their minds so much and then they get very angry, and they don’t like to read things which explain my experience. I also know my mom prefers to read my diaries instead of actually asking me questions. And instead of asking me how I am, too many people ask if I am taking my medication. I hate that. It’s so cold.

I do know I have to stop listening to people who think I’m being grandiose when I talk about trying to become a major feature filmmaker, learn four more languages, get my masters and PhD, and live off of my art work. People are more concerned about me getting a job and having a workplace I fit into, and I don’t fit into any workplaces. I think it’s a waste of my talents, my energy is better spent working on my own projects than making shoes forty hours a week. (I don’t make shoes, it’s just an example). I also decided I want to learn to play the guitar. I have a hard time playing music because it expresses my emotions the most concisly and that makes me shy, since everyone always told me my emotions were problematic. So I think it would be good for me to have an outlet for it. I really do like music. My mom used to always say that I was tone deaf or something, but I voraciously devour music and when she’s not around to make fun of me I actually do like bopping around singing. I am sure I will sometimes cry terribly while making music, but maybe that’s a form of therapy. Filmmaking is quite similar to music actually, in that it’s a time based medium and uses emotional responses.

I think it will be good for me to go to grad school. I can be around people who like learning, more so than people in a bachelors program. I was surrounded by a lot of other gifted people at Emily Carr, which was nice because for the first time I wasn’t a freak, but there were also some silly people there who were just doing art because they were told to go to uni in order to access their trust funds. It was fun though. And being in a learning environment dedicated to advancing human rights is really freakin’ sexy. I really hope it happens, I’m freaking out about the recommendation letters, but I have to do the other stuff and trust that the letters will come in. I still need to choose a writing sample, and that’s a BIG part of the issue. I know I wrote a brilliant analytical essay in an exam, I could use that. Hmm, not sure not sure. I have several papers around, but the sociology one might make the most sense.

Plus it’s a reason to spend a year in Toronto, which I’ve never really lived in. I don’t know how I’ll do there. I know I can’t live in Vancouver again, because people consistently lack empathy when I am bereaved, and obviously Montreal is a terribly dangerous place for someone like me to live, plus the health care system is deeply flawed. I’m surprised they’re not all dead actually. I am thinking I will probably end up settling down in Winnipeg. It’s probably the city I like the best in Canada, the people are all very nice and smart and doing amazing things in their lives, the cost of living is cheaper, and it has some pretty amazing stuff going on in the film/video sphere. Saskatoon is problematic for me in various ways, I love my family but I really don’t fit in with them and I end up feeling dominated and sad, there isn’t a film and video community, the art community is very insecure and conservative, and as a whole, I dunno, it’s not a happy place. I can’t even engage with the queer or BDSM community here, and that really sucks. I wish I knew more trans people too.

Ideally I would live in a big city, but I can’t do the starving to death thing again. It’s a ruthless and careless environment. I’m realizing more and more that I am going to have to envision and craft a lifestyle for myself that works, irregardless of other people’s opinions. I have a vague idea of what that will look like. I have to completely reassess myself now that I know about OE’s, that they are innate, and that I will always live with them. Accepting them is kind of interesting, because now I actually have something to work with. There’s no way to eliminate them short of killing myself, and I really don’t care to do that. So I am going to try and adjust to life with them. Some people only have a few OE’s, and I have all of them!!!