Disclaimer- The stories in these blogs reflect the type of person I USED to be before I had started receiving treatment for my paranoid schizophrenia. I, in no way condone or approve of the type of behavior displayed in these stories I tell about my old life but rather try to simply state the idea that this is the person I used to be, and have since then learned from my mistakes and am in the process of turning my life around for the better. Part of my therapy is writing down these old stories as an attempt to take all of those negative things in my life and turn them into something positive and productive. So I want to thank you for supporting this positive cause by reading and being interested. It sincerely means a lot to me. I hope you enjoy reading the short story blogs I write about my life. -Joseph
So Back in the sickest years of my schizophrenia, one of my main coping mechanisms was self-mutilation. Like I said in my previous blogs, there was always so much horror and chaos going on in my thoughts from all my delusions and hallucinations that physical pain was my only escape from my own torturous mind. But, after a while people would start asking me about my scars and started thinking that I was a creepy, weird dude. That was something that I was very insecure about back in those days; so another one of my socially acceptable ways of mutilating myself was getting tattooed. Which brings me to a funny yet crazy story.
So there was this one place that I used to get all my tattoos as a teenager. They knew me pretty well there because I would always come in and get the most extreme tattoos. You know, like blacking out my entire leg and things to that degree. Then after a while, I started slipping into insanity and my tattoo ideas would become more strange and unusual. So anyways, this one time I had an idea for a back tattoo. I had secluded myself to my room in my apartment and didn't sleep for about a week. In that seclusion, I came up with, what in my mind was the "code" behind the universe. It was a 13-foot long scroll on graph paper filled with my number combinations with all of the numerical patterns highlighted. This thing was a work of art let me tell you. Now me, being the nut job that I was and thinking it was my duty to save the world, I tattooed a portion of that scroll on my back. In my mind, the tattoo was going to make me the "controller" of the code, which, by the way, I ended up covering up years later. The guys at the tattoo shop thought I was nuts! But a couple of weeks later they were in for an even bigger surprise. (HaHa)
So lets fast-forward about two weeks. I sped up to the tattoo shop in my pick up truck, rip the license plate off with my one hand, grab my laundry from the passenger seat, a piece of paper that I had written number combinations on, $333 dollars, and a black pen. I then run up to the door of the shop and frantically started knocking. The owner comes out and is like," What's up Joe?" I said," The spirits are after me and they are tying to kill me because I am invincible and I know the secrets of the universe. They are trying to stop me from telling the world! Give all of these items to my tattoo artist and he'll know what to do. We are going to save the world." I then handed him my license plate, my laundry, that piece of paper, the $333 dollars, and that black pen. This guy looked at me very puzzled like," Uh, Ok dude." And then I said," And one more thing… everybody bleeds blue." He again looked at me even more puzzled and was like," Uh… What?" I then looked him straight in the eye, took that black pen out of his hand very calmly, and stabbed myself an inch deep into my arm, twisted that pen to the one side to open up the wound and make it bigger and then said very adamantly," Everybody bleeds blue." The owner, then with a very frightened look on his face, slowly walked backwards away from me and was like," OK man, I understand." I then jumped back into my truck, screeched my tires and sped off into the night. Now I did a ton of things like this in that period of my life. It really makes me cringe when I think about them. And I'm sure that the people that experienced me in that mental state will cringe at the thought as well. I didn't know it then, and was too far gone by that point to see it. Not even when I lied down in bed that night and stared at the ceiling thinking to myself," What the hell did I just do today." Did I think anything was wrong. I should have realized there was a problem.
