Constructing a love complex

[Luna-]

Mjolnir-

I have taken this paragraph from your reply on another thread:

If that doesn't work, I'll tell you something someone told me a long time ago that I have told everyone I talk to when confronted with any mental affliction, it has helped me more than any therapy or medication to date. When you're feeling down, focus on loving everything, everything you see, everything you touch. Expend your energy on constructing a love complex. You'd be surprised how rapidly this takes effect on your state of mind and mood.

I am fascinated. I would love to hear more. Would you expand?

[Waiting]

Well I have a similar but diffident approach. I simply strive to understand everything and everyone. I find it close to impossible to hate someone / something you strive to understand (even if you cannot succeed at understanding them). To a large degree it comes down to that we all have causes to our effects, not just ourselves, but we only understand our own causes (sometimes.)

[IrmaJean]

I can very much relate to that. It would be like taking in the world with great appreciation and wonder. With the eyes of a child... Everything is a gift. Sometimes we can forget that. We can forget to take the time to breathe in the moments. I like this. It's something to remember. Never forget to cherish. Thanks.

[spiritual_emergency]

Mjolnir: If that doesn't work, I'll tell you something someone told me a long time ago that I have told everyone I talk to when confronted with any mental affliction, it has helped me more than any therapy or medication to date. When you're feeling down, focus on loving everything, everything you see, everything you touch. Expend your energy on constructing a love complex.

Luna: I am fascinated. I would love to hear more. Would you expand?

When I read this exchange, I silently chortled. I would like to take this moment to remind any readers that Mjolnir is supposed to be "schizophrenic". According to some people, he should be feared as the epitome of the worst kind of human being there is... except he's not that.

This is consistent with my own experience of "schizophrenics". I have long maintained they are some of the most beautiful (albeit, sometimes the most wounded) people I have ever encountered. They have enriched my life.

Those we lock away and think worthless, he says, have the power to teach and even to heal us. We are all “broken” in some way, he believes. “When you start living with people with disabilities”, he says, “you begin to discover a whole lot of things about yourself.” He learned that to “be human is to be bonded together, each with our own weaknesses and strengths, because we need each other.”

~ Jean Vanier

Tonight I spent some time with my child who has been through so much and covered so much ground in the past many long months. We were discussing their upcoming wedding. They are marrying a diagnosed "schizophrenic" and although in some families, this might be considered a tragedy -- in our family, it is not. This is because I know something that most people do not know.

A decade ago I could not have predicted that I would be where I am now. I didn't know what "schizophrenia" was then. I didn't know anyone who was considered to be "schizophrenic". Since then, it has been the "broken" who have been some of my greatest teachers.

I like being here. I am learning valuable lessons in this space. Life has become joyful in a deeper and richer way. I have an appreciation for the wonderment of the human spirit, the strength of the human spirit, the eternalness of the human spirit, that I never had before.

It is good.

~ Namaste

Music of the Hour:

See also: The Spirit of Tonglen

[Luna-]

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” - Ernest Hemingway

[Guy Out There]

One of my personal mottos:

"A wounded man will always lead you to the enemy, the enemy is your ignorance"

some inspiring posts on this thread...

[Mjolnir07]

Well, schizophrenia hits you like a lightning bolt, or at least it did me.

One day I woke up and I was insane, of course, I'd been that way all of my life, but one day I woke up and I no longer felt sane. Moreover, I felt like insanity was slapping me around 24 hours a day. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I didn't feel like bathing myself, I spent every moment of my life trying to regain my grip on reality, long story short, that is.

I felt like I was rolling a massive boulder up a hill, that's the way it was, just bam, I wake up out of nowhere and I'm 400 yards up this steep hill rolling a giant boulder that's threatening to collapse my bone structure. I pushed that damned boulder on and upward for weeks at a time, knowing that if I gave in and stopped pushing, it would crush me. Knowing that if I rested then I would lose my momentum and stop pushing and it would crush me. Knowing that if I didn't keep the right pace that I would trip and, not having anything pushing against it, it would crush me. It wore on me mentally just the same, it wore on me physically in more than one way. I began to contemplate, "how can I keep pushing this boulder forever knowing that I will never again be able to enjoy the peace of not having to push a friggin boulder up a hill?" "How can I find assistance to push this boulder up this hill if I can't relax my grip on it for even a moment to focus my attention elsewhere?" And then someone told me to love the boulder, and I thought "I don't love this boulder, it's trying to kill me." Then I thought, "I have to love it anyway." So every time I wanted to cry in agony or self pity, I focused on loving the boulder, everytime the wind shook me and I almost lost my balance, I focused on loving the wind, every time my sweat hindered my grip, I focused on loving my sweat. Then finally, finally I loved that boulder, I truly loved it more than anything else, I was glad to be sacrificing my sanity to that boulder, in my mind it would be an effort better earned by nothing else in this world. And I thought there is an old saying, If you love something, let it go. With sadness in my heart, I stepped aside, and the boulder tumbled down the hill, and I realized that I could've done that at the start, if I had only had the wisdom of that kind of universal love in my heart to begin with, telling me to stop worrying about what I had to do and to start thinking of ways to make what I was doing easier. I was blinded by the pain because I was only paying attention to it, it never occurred to me to just go around it. So now I'm lightyears up this hill, looking down at the accomplishment that is the reward of my relentless need to persevere, and the sky is so pretty from up here. That struggle taught me more than I have ever been taught by anything else in my life, and I'd do it again. I miss my boulder, I loved it so.

To put it less allegorically, I woke up one day with thoughts in my head that didn't feel like mine, they gradually got louder, and louder, until they were basically voices. When I closed my eyes I'd see myself burning in hell, when I opened my eyes I'd see that indeed I was. There was no rest, at first all I wanted was for it to stop, for this perpetual violation of my mind to end. I wanted some bridge back to reality, the reality I remembered and was gradually forgetting. Then I accepted that there would be no bridge, and I began to look for ways to feel more at ease that I would be trapped here forever, so I came here, and with the help of my friends here, particularly Spiritual E, I realized that while I may not be able to build a bridge back the way that I came I did not just have to sit here and suffer, I could, in fact, transverse the eternal inferno and build a bridge to my way out on the other side. I'm still frolicking through the fire and the flames, but instead of looking down at my melting skin I turn my attention to loving the air I breathe, loving every stranger I see, loving every idea in my head, no matter how bizarre, loving gravity, loving eyebrows, loving children, loving those who hate, loving everything from the completely frivolous and trivial and without cause to be loved to loving things that deserved to be loved 100 percent through and back and forth. It's disarmed me of all of the negative emotions I thought were apart of being a human being, especially one who is made to suffer. I used to think your natural reaction to stepping on a needle would be indignation, and irritation, that missing the bus would be annoying and inconvenient, that spilling milk would be a hassle. Now my reaction to every single thing, my default response to any stimulation is love. If I never find the other side, I will be fine just right here. I recommend it.

[spiritual_emergency]

Mjolnir: Now my reaction to every single thing, my default response to any stimulation is love. If I never find the other side, I will be fine just right here. I recommend it.

I love this thread!

~ Namaste

[Luna-]

This is an impressive skill, Mjolnir. I think it speaks to strength of mind. I’m not finding loving something I hate, easy at all. I have great resistance to loving suffering. I know that my difficulty lies in not doing being able to do this, but I seem very invested in my reactions and unable to let go as you have done.

I have sat with your post and read it over and over and thought and thought. I want so much to understand. I want to do what you have done. It ties in with an approach to bipolar I’m reading about, in which one focuses on changing one’s response to extreme mood states, instead of trying to suppress or control the moods. It makes sense to me to try and work on the ability to face the state, rather than trying to suppress it and then being powerless when it happens again anyway.

But when that black blanket comes down to smother me and I feel powerless to fight it, I just cannot wrap my mind around how to love it. I know I'm revealing my ignorance and inability in saying this and I know my resistance increases the suffering and only locks me in more, but I’m damned if I can see how to go about focussing on loving something I hate. How do love a boulder that wants to flatten you, a black hole that wants to implode you?

How did you make the transition from “I don't love this boulder, it's trying to kill me", to “then finally, finally I loved that boulder …”? Is there any way you can break this down for me? How to think about this?

I don’t even know if it is possible for this to be taught. I hear your words but I don’t see how to make them a reality for myself. All I know, is I want very much to understand and be able to do this.

[IrmaJean]

Maybe loving in this case is about accepting. You put your energy into working with what is there, rather than fighting what you can't change. This is an impressive skill.

Mjolnir07, this is powerful stuff and quite moving to read. Thank you for sharing.

[malign]

How did you make the transition from “I don't love this boulder, it's trying to kill me", to “then finally, finally I loved that boulder …”?

I don't really know an answer, for sure. I still have times when the boulders get to me.

But possibly it might help if you didn't attribute motivation to the boulders. They might possibly kill you, if the depression gets that bad. But I don't think they're trying; they're just being boulders.

Moods have no intentions; it's not us against them. It's more that they exist, so what can we do about them?

Then, maybe, one of the possibilities becomes: we could love them (and ourselves), just the way they are.

[Mjolnir07]

How did you make the transition from “I don't love this boulder, it's trying to kill me", to “then finally, finally I loved that boulder …”? Is there any way you can break this down for me? How to think about this?

I don’t even know if it is possible for this to be taught. I hear your words but I don’t see how to make them a reality for myself. All I know, is I want very much to understand and be able to do this.

Ah, I'm very glad you said this. I will attempt to convey this without becoming too philosophical, stop me if I get confusing. Some weeks ago I had a lengthy conversation with my close childhood friend who is also a member of our forum. I'm going to move some of that conversation over here with the hope that I have her assumed permission to do so.

It is to my belief that there are in fact two boundaries of mental suffering within each of us.

The first is common among every human being and is primal, an extent of maximum suffering that can be reached by physical means which provoke emotions. We're talking about scenarios involving the overall quality of life experienced circumstantially. For example: A woman who is married to an abusive man and it is beyond her control to remove herself from him, possibly because of concern for her children or the threat of violence. She reaches a point where she acknowledges that there is no hope and that she must carry on throughout life in a state of constant suffering. This puts her into a profound and eternal depression that will remain unmoved and perpetually deconstruct every possibility for her to experience happiness; destroying her confidence, willpower, motivation, energy, faith, and so forth irreversibly. She probably has great difficulty, because all of her actions are filtered through this evolving state of mind, performing basic functions of day to day life, given that her will to exist has almost entirely been dissolved. Another example may be the threat of starvation and what that may do to the mind, the barriers that the mind builds to protect sanity from the forced self awareness of the doomed. When will I be able to eat? Will I ever be able to provide sufficient food for myself? Or, even more devastatingly, when will my children be able to eat, what must I do to provide sufficient nutrition for them? This evolves into "I will not look at what if, I will only look at how I can handle it in this moment." Such barriers are a natural progression of mental defense in response to undesired and uncontrollable torment. In each of these scenarios there will almost certainly come a breaking point where the mind takes over due to suffering and numbs the individual to it, either jading them or causing them to consider behaving irrationally in order to combat the pain of extreme residual negative emotion. The important thing to note, here, in these primal examples, is that even though the degree of suffering is relentless, disabling and perhaps permanent, both of them involve a human being who is still capable of choosing what to do for themselves, not necessarily in correlation to their antagonist, but certainly over basic instinct. Like: I will or will not stand, I will or will not blink, I will or will not dress myself.

The first boundary is formed by perceptually acknowledged absolute truths, the mind is astonishingly powerful and can adapt to handle a remarkably sophisticated degree of compounding attacks upon it.

The mind can, before this first boundary, WITHDRAW, a person can normally 'step back' within their head and look upon a situation, choosing how to react and where to designate emotional response.

But what if these absolute truths are challenged? What if the mind is itself the source of the suffering? This is the second boundary, I call it the pscyhotraumatic limit, and it is the absolute furthest extent that any human being can suffer. A relatively small percentage of the population ever experience this element of anguish, and I believe it is reserved for the mentally ill and the horrendously traumatized. While behind the first boundary the mind can absorb and mold itself to meet and work through virtually every externality, its breaches of that line remain infrequent and temporary, never traveling so far beyond it that the individual will become marooned there. In ironic contrast, 99.9 percent of the population exist behind this first, primal boundary and only ever catch brief glimpses past it in a lifetime, never even remotely enough to develop a whole understanding of what I have lovingly deemed 'The Profound Darkness'. The remaining portion live inside this Profound Darkness, and struggle profusely to find a pathway back to the comfortable stability of unassuming existence. This is madness, as you may recall I have been obsessed with it for fairly the span of my life and through probably the most hilariously well defined self-fulfilling prophecy I myself am now battling it at least 23 hours a day. Though thankfully even my tribulations have only plunged me to the brink of psychotraumatic limit fewer times than I can count on my fingers.

So, what? Here we are within what we can most appropriately label Hell. When there is a presence of thought pattern distortion, a twisting of the capacity to interpret reality and a livid violation of the mind's inherit ability to denounce or assert itself where does one WITHDRAW to? The unafflicted can withdraw to speculation of the external, but when the mind is what's fucking with the mind, where do you withdraw to? You don't, not technically. At this point your mind is forcing you to recognize and deal with things within it that have no substance in the presiding outside world at that time. This is the death you are talking about, it feels like death because in a painfully literal sense you are dying, your idea of you as you know you in all your power to fight emotion with logic behind the first boundary of mental suffering is fading every time you are forced to question your mind's behavior. This, [omitted] , is Ego-death, and it is exponentially worse than physical death because those who physically die are rewarded with the peace of not having to experience it for more than a few moments. The good news is, and as harsh as this sounds in its bluntness, if you can manage to not kill yourself and endure, endure, endure, you will be rewarded with rebirth. The fragmentation of the identity will, like every other natural occurrence in the physical universe, eventually reassemble, leaving you not just as you once were but a thousand times better and more stable. It's like how a broken bone heals stronger than it was before it was broken. [omitted]. When most people get to that point in psychosis it never occurs to them that it may not actually be happening, this is the gift of your intelligence guiding you through. This power of recognition is also your weapon against developing [mental illness]. Use it. Whatever you do, believe in this gift and do not give up and do not [omitted]. I'm telling you, you will become fantastically confident, joyful and most of all wise [omitted]. I said that the people behind this second psychotraumatic boundary spend all of their time trying to find a pathway back to stability, unfortunately most don't, but that's because it never occurs to them to make the pathway.

I included my secondary part about psychosis to illustrate a point that may otherwise be more difficult to grasp without a background on how one arrives at the conclusions I did. Obviously, Luna, like many here, are not prone to psychosis so this may seem irrelevant to our conversation here about constructing a love complex.

With all that having been said, let's take a look at transition.

The mind thinks in binary, it wouldn't be hard for you to imagine a world where there existed only two defined numbers, 0 and 1, right? That means that any number that isn't 1 doesn't have a countable mass and is in fact 0. So if it's not 0 than that means that it has substance and is 1. This is easy to grasp, of course, because as said above the mind thinks in binary. On or off, black or white, dead if not alive, if not right then the opposite of right, which means if it's not right then it's left. Can you imagine a world without numbers? Of course you can't, everything has substance, everything can be counted and its significance can be attached numerically to its definition when you compare it to something else. We have a discussion about 'opposites' in the psychosis forum, reading that may assist in understanding what I'm trying to say here. We define everything from what we perceive to how we feel by comparing it to its range of opposites.

Because this is already insanely long, I'm going to refresh us on what you said here:

[Mjolnir07]

How did you make the transition from “I don't love this boulder, it's trying to kill me", to “then finally, finally I loved that boulder …”? Is there any way you can break this down for me? How to think about this?

Transition.

As human beings, we naturally look for ways to transition.

Why? Because if you're sad, if you're depressed, then you are not happy. We want to feel happiness instead of sadness. Happy if not sad. Left if not right, binary right? Obviously, we can't just blink and snap! That sadness has been replaced by happiness. But wait, replaced, that's a transition. We innately feel like something needs to take place in order to indicate that there has been a movement from what we do not wish to what we do wish. I think we can all unhesitatingly agree here that the best thing anyone can feel is love, the ultimate and sustained joy that being capable of carelessly submitting yourself to the freedom of that ultimate and sustained joy perpetuates itself. But, why do we feel love. We meet someone we like, they impress us in uncharacteristic ways, we fall in love. We give birth to our children, our own flesh and blood. We feel protective and nurturing to these children, we feel the powerful, instinctual need to defend their well-being at all costs because they are majestically beautiful to us in ways that only our own child can be, we love them. We like our hobbies, art, or sports, or reading, or debating, or helping others, we love our hobbies because we've found something in them that make them important to us. We love our gods because we've found something redeeming and self-validating about opening our lives to their religion.

I'm sorry, I know I'm probably causing headaches with this post, I'll try to wrap it up.

The reason I was able to love my boulder is unfortunately because I've gone off the deep end and my brain does not work like it once did. I included the above portion about psychosis in order to illustrate that intense strain causes the mind to seek a solution, and intense failure to find that solution causes the mind to cease being your ally, but when your mind seems like it is at its weakest and least controllable is in fact when you have the greatest control over your perception. Because I am a schizophrenic I clearly perceive paradoxes as simultaneous truths instead of contradictions, I see through illusions (I mean like magic-eye illusions), does this mean my brain does not work right? Right instead of left, I say. I was at a point where I was forced to alter my definition of reality in order to accept the reality I no longer had a part in controlling. How did I do this? I stopped thinking in binary, and you don't have to be crazy like I am to do the same. I'm not telling you to relabel sadness as happiness, I'm not telling you to grin and bear it, I'm not telling you to shift your attention elsewhere, I'm not telling you to find a way to replace pain with joy or strife with love, I'm not even telling you to abandon your negative emotions or numb them or pretend they're not there or that they don't exist. I'm telling you that we see time as linear, and we find that certain things take place in a series that cause us to acknowledge our emotions as a rational conclusion to specific events. They are a reaction to the culmination of a transition. We think that this requires a choice, because we believe that in order to find the necessary transition to our desired emotion we need to locate it and make a choice to initiate that transition.

Forget transition, forget choice. The only choice you need to make is to choose to skip that transition. Your brain is obviously capable of feeling love or at least joy, I'm taking liberties in assuming that we've all experienced it at least once at one time. So you know you are capable of feeling love. What you may not know is that no transition is required, again, not saying blink it's magic and we're joy. But you can't deny that you know what joy feels like. Why should something external have to cause that joy? Because we're human, and we think in binary, that's why. Skip the external cause, skip the outside stimulation, I'm not saying attempt to force yourself to feel something you clearly do not, I mean, I'm saying you need to truly understand that transition isn't just unnecessary, start thinking of transition as your brain misinterpreting how it needs to function. A mistake, an immaterial pattern of thought that causes you to misconstrue the idea that something needs to be done, that there's something you need to do, that a choice has to be made, that you or someone else or something else needs to come along and correct your left to make it right. There's no such thing as left or right, only our need to feel the weight of a rationality. It is not irrational to feel joy for no reason, throw it right on top of your sadness there, just pile that meaningless joy up until the sadness is crushed. I guarantee the sadness will dissolve. Nothing needs to be understood, nothing needs to be rationalized or confirmed, if you need to, just tell yourself you're already feeling love, and when you think "duh, I'm not feeling love.", don't argue with that thought, just accept that it's there and that it's not wrong at all but somehow you feel love anyway. Blink.

Man I hope I didn't just confuse things further.

I’m reading about, in which one focuses on changing one’s response to extreme mood states, instead of trying to suppress or control the moods.

Remember, you're not changing, suppressing or even controlling anything. You're accepting that change is the brain's false understanding of the way things need to work in order to achieve what you desire.

[Luna-]

Wow.

Blink.

It makes so much sense.

I have been thinking squarely in the middle of duality. The “either-or” thinking. Either sadness or happiness. How to change one to the other. Instead of seeing the simultaneous truths, thinking “both-and”. I follow your and SE’s conversations, even though I often get lost along the way, and I read the Duality thread. (I have also stared myself silly at the Hollow Mask illusion and, try as I may, I get fooled every time. I just can’t see the hollow.) I just never saw the binary/duality in this context (of thinking I have to change one thing to its opposite.) Yes, the mind thinks readily in binary. It’s automatic. But it is possible for two opposing truths to both be true and if one is thought more than the other, it begins to outweigh it. And that is, I think, what you are talking about (?)

In one of the earlier drafts of my question, I had asked the question “is this a matter of a realisation or it is achieved through effort?” And now I see, of course, that it’s also both. The realisation (which I believe I just had) and the work of generating and piling the joy/love onto the heap of sadness. I can see how it would work. I was very stuck in “duh, I don’t love this boulder” and could not see how to get from that to “oh, I just love this boulder”. But of course it is possible to feel both and not have to deny the truth that I really hate something and want desperately to escape from it. Because that is an undeniable truth for me and trying to erase a truth is a huge boulder in my way! It’s possible for both to be true. And then the duality will loosen. I guess this is intuitive for some people, to hold that paradox without conflict, to love something they hate, but it’s not intuitive for me, I have to think about it.

And as I think more about it, I realise that I have in fact, met this concept before. I mean the “either-or/both-and” concept, transcending the duality. It was with the help of my very first therapist, trained with a Jungian bent. And one doesn’t need to have experienced this in psychosis to grasp it, although I can see how psychosis facilitates it. What I hear you saying is that you experience less of the tension that the paradox causes in me, because your sense of duality is loosened with the psychosis and you readily perceive simultaneous, seemingly-opposite, truths (do I have that right?) It’s not outside my ability to think ”both-and”, but man, my mind is wed to duality and it is a stretch to loosen that.

You didn’t confuse things further or give me headaches with it *smile*, it was clear to me. You understood what I was asking and explained it in practical terms, which is what I was looking for. Forget the transition. Forget changing the hate into love, which I couldn’t see how to do. Thank you so much!

The binary concept doesn’t tie in all that much with what I am reading any more. But what I am reading borders on what you said in the beginning about the first, primal boundary of suffering and one’s range of choice of response in the matter. If I accept that bipolar (in the arena of intense moods), and especially deep depression, is an inescapable reality in my head then how I will choose to react to it, is pertinent. (I sometimes doubt the bipolar but I definitely have the depressions.) So that first part of your explanation also helped clarify this.

I appreciate this so much. It's both a fairly large shift and a quick hop in perception and I see how to do it.

[Mjolnir07]

. But it is possible for two opposing truths to both be true and if one is thought more than the other, it begins to outweigh it. And that is, I think, what you are talking about (?)

Precisely! We are the ones who give weight to an emotion, and if we can neither control our emotional reaction to things nor the things that cause that emotional reaction than we can at least teach ourselves to construct otherwise unfounded emotions to use as a resource.

Because that is an undeniable truth for me and trying to erase a truth is a huge boulder in my way! It’s possible for both to be true. And then the duality will loosen. I guess this is intuitive for some people, to hold that paradox without conflict, to love something they hate, but it’s not intuitive for me, I have to think about it.

I don't believe that it is in fact intuitive for many people, at least not at first. It takes some serious contemplation to master and it involves raising questions that rarely occur for people to ask themselves.

What I hear you saying is that you experience less of the tension that the paradox causes in me, because your sense of duality is loosened with the psychosis and you readily perceive simultaneous, seemingly-opposite, truths (do I have that right?) It’s not outside my ability to think ”both-and”, but man, my mind is wed to duality and it is a stretch to loosen that.

Indeed, I believe that since my reality has been warped that this theory rooted in my head only because I was at the time of its conception exceptionally lost in obscure and abstract ways of thinking. I am genuinely encouraged that I've managed to convey these ideas to a sane person, because there was a part of me that feared that because I grasped this that it was psychotic and incoherent in nature and could not be conceived of by the sane. You are not alone, everyone is forged with duality, it's the simplest and most logical way to experience the universe.

You didn’t confuse things further or give me headaches with it *smile*, it was clear to me. You understood what I was asking and explained it in practical terms, which is what I was looking for. Forget the transition. Forget changing the hate into love, which I couldn’t see how to do. Thank you so much!

I appreciate this so much. It's both a fairly large shift and a quick hop in perception and I see how to do it.

I'm truly, truly glad I was able to help.

[Guest ASchwartz]

Hi Mjo,

I want to point out one thing. You are not schizophrenic. Instead, you have schizophrenia. There is a big difference between the two.

What do you think about this?

Allan

[Mjolnir07]

Hi Mjo,

I want to point out one thing. You are not schizophrenic. Instead, you have schizophrenia. There is a big difference between the two.

What do you think about this?

Allan

I appreciate that gesture of sentiment Allan. I suppose there is indeed a distinction between the illness and the sufferer, do you suggest this because of the negative connotations associated with being labeled? I think that for a man with schizophrenia, I myself demonstrate thankfully few outwardly recognizable schizophrenic qualities. So in that sense, in many ways I am not schizophrenic YES YOU ARE NO I'M NOT.

I'm sorry, that was really bad humor and in poor taste, I couldn't resist.

Honestly, it doesn't bother me anymore to accept what I am or what I have, though at one time I may have found comfort in separating my disease from my character and from my self image, and I acknowledge the merit in encouraging others to do so. One is not one's disease.