"Mind Field"💗 [14.09.24]
Wholesomeness Deployed: Chill Issue - Empaths vs HSP - Mental Health -Slice Of Life- Remembering DAD - Confessional Conversations..🍷🤍
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14 September 2024
Dear Chasers💗
I can hear myself saying ‘it’s been a minute!’ and it has been a long couple of months since I wrote to you from here. I think my previous post to this one was dated sometime in January ‘24. I figured out why THIS publication ‘disappeared’ from my profile, it was because I had made it private to subscribers only. I did the same thing with my most recent profile too; but by this time I also have LONG since established NEW:JustClingingOn💗 To be honest I had no intention of ever writing through here ever again. I was too afraid of all my words being lost to the void, even so, isn’t that what happens to them all in the end anyway?
I had a recent blast from the past encounter, only online of course, it was a friend of my Dad’s which is why I have decided to include some of our conversation here also. He was describing how my Dad had kept in touch with him for many years and suddenly the contact had stopped. Regretfully, I had to inform him that my Dad had sadly and suddenly passed away back in 2017. His friend was very upset to hear that but said that it made more sense than just losing contact or not responding to the emails he’d written to Dad.
I had a further conversation about the things all three of us, Dad, his friend and I had experienced together. I ended up complaining about the way certain things played out that resulted in me being kicked out of my Dad’s house years ago. It was during that conversation that Dad’s friend, we’ll call him Mike, told me from his professional point of view as a psychiatrist or psychologist (something along those lines, in the MIND FIELD) about my condition of chronic mental illness.
I was intrigued to hear what he had to say and had always valued his personal and his professional opinions; nothing could have prepared me for what he said next. I did save the text message for quite some time, well, it only happened this month but still I ended up deleting it with 309 other images to make some space on the Chromebook. I can only tell you about it from memory which, although some of it has stuck in my mind, the entire conversation is quite vague. So I will paraphrase. No, I will cut to the Chase!
It’s not you Chase - It’s your illness.
He told me that my paranoid schizophrenia causes me to make bad decisions that hurt people sometime exceptionally hurt people. I am unable to understand that kind of hurt or even what I have caused because and the rest is from memory but you can see what he said and guess on my reaction. I didn’t like what I was hearing, but I had never heard anything like it before, he was the professional after all. But, what if it was designed as shady insult to throw me of guard, knock me down a peg or two. It didn’t make any sense but it was worth looking into it, and keeping my mouth shut about it until I had. Did I manage it? urm… Nope! :/
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when he said it. He didn’t direct it to me as an insult or intended criticism, constructive or not; he blames it on my diagnoses. I felt totally shocked, but more upset because I was being misunderstood. Was I really being completely overly-judged, like a book by the cover. IS this something I should protest under the Stop The Stigma blanket? I mean, never before have I felt so under-dressed egotistically - I sat there mouth agape, pulled up my big girl pants, and doubled checked that my LABEL was NOT STICKING out.
“Chase, mate you’ve not got the ability to feel empathy”.
I was surprised to hear those words, especially as I consider myself to have an empathetic nature. I replied with a big fat super-polite lie: “I do have empathy, I’m an EMPATH because of my HSP*”, I grabbed my mouth in disbelief.. oh shit!
I instantly felt regret after I had hit send. I had no time to retract it. The deed had been ‘seen’ and I was done for. He didn’t reply straight away.
I had been (((LEFTonREAD))) - speaking of which, I got annoyed about some other shit that had been left on read too. It might be a better to time to mention that, Dad’s friend, ‘Mike’ also happens to be one of my ex-ex-ex boyfriends (and that’s how Dad had met him and kept in touch with him afterwards. For years and years.
I had this silly idea for newsletter that would be an ‘online diary’, a place to say what people weren’t giving me chance to say because they had ‘left me on read’ (or seen as some Messenger apps say), maybe a place to do all my casual ranting. The idea fizzled away but I kept the page ‘just in case’. I’m not sure that I will follow it through (oh please don’t let me say those words again! see: The Daily Chase Post - Next Level Disrespect.
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I had hoped he wouldn’t respond anyway, I didn’t wish to be questioned further on the ‘confession of a new diagnoses or condition on top of my chronic lifelong affliction which he already knew about; because, I am not into keeping up a lie. I admit, I bail out on it and break my silence. I would come clean and believe the truth shall set you free and if I know one thing about being ‘‘a schizophrenic’’ it is that I can’t live with an unclean conscience - our conscience seem to drive the ship, and when it isn’t alerted to anything, that’s when the waves take over. It is a shit situation. Nobody enjoys being deceitful I shouldn’t imagine. Anyway, lets not go completely off topic.
I didn’t have the slightest clue what I had been thinking. I just remembered seeing a TED TALK by a *HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON.
Actually, on thinking further about it and looking at it at a glance in the image above, I am pretty sure that there’s massive differences between being a HSP vs Empaths. If I am correct in my second-thought estimation about the vast variety of examples, Mike would definitely have already been aware of this; and so by making up this shithead fib I made myself look even more stupid.
Maybe that explains him soft-ghosting me there after.
Who knows, I might be HSP but I’ve never had it confirmed. I think this calls for me to look into some of this further. I will go away now and do some MeSearch via YouTube and Google. I need to find out one question for certain, and that is whether or not in neuroscience it has been prove that people with a brain full of schizophrenia are prevented from experiences empathy.
I have to be very careful how I word the questions because, beign a child of the 90’s and having dated a few computer programmers, heard a bit about early coding, and stored an ‘essential’ anogram in my differently wired brain. I still remember the phrase; Garbage In Garbage Out, and understand how it can determine the accuracy of the results, and potentially, for want of a better way of saying this, I am rushing to go study, how potentially it could fuck up the information provided as an outcome. It isn’t life or death but after already coming across dumb when trying to be clever. If I go back to Mike and challenge the statement, I need to be spot on and not end up with egg on my face… a second time.
Next Issue Will Include A Brief Mention of My Findings, along with more Chasey News.
Just before I go I will leave you with an akward but almost humourous annedote from what else I have been told during the conversation with Mike, it might ‘incriminate’ my Dad but brings to mind the crafty, cheeky charm Dad had, and for that one night, his friend Mike and I, managed to light up our lives, rejoice with humour and illuminate Dad, God Bless, His Soul. RIP DAD..x
MIKE: After you and I split up Chase. I used to get bills for purchasing on my credit card for takeaways in Manchester from Dominos Pizza. It would happen on a regular basis and I would turn a blind eye to it, quietly foot the bill and not complain. Know anything about this?
ME: I never had any access to your details, your cards or accounts or anything. How could I have. You know that. So, No… Not at all mate. Dominos is the last place I’d go for a takeaway. Too expensive, and not my taste. I prefer Noodles, Curry, Kebabs, and at as a treat now, I ALWAYS order McDonalds on JustEat. But, wait…..OMG! I bet it was my Dad! *laughs*
MIKE: I wasn’t going to say anything but it was always delivered to your Dad’s flat, I remembered the Manchester address and it showed up on the statements when I looked into it. I just rolled my eyes and kept on paying it. He never mentioned it or anything when we kept in touch, and I never brought it up to him either.
ME: fucking hell. It’s just like him to do that but it’s a bit annoying how he would have known that you might’ve thought that it was ME who was doing all that. hahaha cheeky-so-and-so DAD!
ON THAT NOTE I’LL LET YOU GO NOW WITH MY (TRADEMARK GIFT) OF AN ‘EXIT’ SONG:
*Waves ByeBye* ALMOST WITH A REGAL POSTURE, (and forever IMPROVING) yet, Considerably Yours Sincerely!..x Chasey Delaney-JustClingingOn💗
I have never seen the Virginia Woolf quote, tho I have read a few of her things. Very moving.