Old New Blog Transfer

Since the incorporation of jakeisalive, the hub of all of my other blogs, this blog too will now turn a new page in its life. So this post is the dividing point between its old life and new life. Everything below this post is the old blog and everything above it is new. This will still be my regular blog, poetry, pics for the most part, and reviews will go to my other blogs. This is for my long rants about things that  are sometimes crazy and hair brained and other times really intriguing and truly uplifting. So enjoy.


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jakeisalive.blogspot.com

This is my trial...

Alright, here we go, a little bit more serious a post this time. I try to get over all of the things I’ve done to dig myself in pits and take a fresh perspective at my life. I ask what am I really worth? I try to look at myself as if I was looking at another person in my position. That is when I can see that I am worth so much, because I know the worth of other people regardless of their downfalls, but left to myself within my own head I lose that perspective quickly and I think that I am pretty useless. The fact of the matter is, I love life and living, and there are so many opportunities and great things to do and accomplish here, but when the world is revolving in a way that you can’t stick to what am I supposed to do? Are there any opportunities for me? Is there anything I can do? is there anyone for me? I am not afraid of dying, but I don’t want to die sad without any glimmer of hope in my eyes. I can overcome this trial. This issue of things plaguing me physically is not difficult at all, I will survive that is a fact, but what might kill me is trying to figure out how to live normally in this life, how to keep a consistent job or do well in school. If I can’t do those things than I can never progress toward my ultimate goal and that breaks my heart. I think people think I am lazy, and that makes me think that I really am lazy and of no use, but I am not lazy, I am simply burdened with a heavy load which is where my energy is spent in trying to carry it, but to others it is invisible, and I lack in what is not invisible to others, so they think I am slacking and of little use and leave me begging for water on the wayside. What can I do? I don’t know. I just don’t know right now. At least I am understanding more of the underlying problem I have, but what am I to do in the mean time while they continue to figure me out? This is my trial and like I’ve always said, I don’t know what yet, but I’ll figure something out, you can count on it.    

These are my trials..

Well, I’m back in the good ol’ Lehi, and I’ve got some answers but also some more questions. I went out to California because my mom knew a doctor out there who does this thing called a SCEPT scan of people’s brains. It differs from an MRI or CAT scan in ways I don’t care to go into detail about right now. The prognosis is, is that I’ve got brain damage consistent with one who’s been abusing drugs for years or one who’s had a severe head trauma… The odd thing about this is that I’ve never done either one of those things.

Do you like puzzles, my brain is one the doctor said. I have a really interesting printout of the scan they did of the activity in my brain and he said that he’s done thousands upon thousands of scans and has seen less than a handful of scans even remotely resembling mine. There is all too much to talk about so I’ll be as simple as possible. Not even talking about the damaged part of my brain, I have activity that is consistent with someone who has ADD, but it is even stranger than that. I don’t really understand all this stuff but I’ll explain it as best as I can using this example. Imagine a big empty room split down the middle.(this is the brain, left and right side.) place boxes in the back of the room equally on both sides that have written on them “normal activity.” That is where the boxes should be, but now shove all those boxes to the front of the room equally on both sides, so now the boxes are in the front of the room equally on both sides, but now rewrite on them ADD. This is what is common in an attention deficit disorder brain, but now take away the boxes on the right side and leave the rest of the room empty with only the ADD boxes on the left side of the room. That is my brain and the doctor is baffled as to why that is. So basically the left side of my brain is overloaded with ADD while the right side of my brain is dead empty.

Let’s take a trip back in time to about 2006 when I was on my mission. I’ve talked about before how I had a strange rash that the doctors out there never diagnosed and it started to cover my whole body. I eventually took an ice bath everyday for about a month which to my knowledge got rid of my rash. But, let’s just say that that rash was given to me by a tic which are extremely common in South Carolina which carried Lyme disease. If this indeed was a Lyme Disease rash than taking an ice bath everyday would have only suppressed it and caused it to lie dormant in my body and not have cured it. The medical community has nick named Lyme disease, the great imitator because it presents itself as a slew of other medical issues such as degenerative arthritis, which if you don’t know I was diagnosed with shortly after coming home after my mission. The doctor told me to pray because I had degenerative arthritis and there wasn’t much that could be done to reverse it. Well, long story short I didn’t believe the doctor when he said that I had arthritis and low and behold come four years later I don’t. but I showed more than all of the symptoms when they tested me and it even showed up in a blood test. Also it causes if not treated properly neurological symptoms that might be confused with schizophrenia which symptoms I’ve been experiencing lately. This infection which might have been continually in my system over the years may have entered my brain and has been causing this brain damage since the original rash even though the surface symptoms went away.

Well, another long story short I’ve got another mountain to climb when it comes to my health. I am going to get some blood samples taken in a few days by a clinic here to try and get some answers. I am continually going to work with and talk with my doctor out in Fairfield, California over the phone and email so he can walk me through this process.

The only thing that is frustrating is that I’ve always had health problems but they’ve always been elusive when it comes to doctors being able to figure out what’s wrong with me. That is what is so hard because it makes me think that there must not be anything wrong with me and I am just weak when it comes to living normally and am making all these issues up in my head. But the fact of the matter is, is there really is something if not a slew of things wrong with me which is why I’ve struggled so much with school, jobs, and relationships, but it’s just I’ve tried to live with these problems without any real diagnoses because they’ve never been able to give me anything solid. This is what makes me upset because I wonder about the things I could have had if I even had a knowledge of how to handle these issues. If I even just knew what they were so I could explain to others about them and get real help and understanding from those  people I care about.

I really just don’t know what to do right now other than wait and pray for answers. It really is to the point where I would have preferred for them to say out right that I had a brain tumor because then I would know what the issue was, but no, I’ve got to have some random disease that mimics twenty other disease and makes you think that you’re going crazy even though you are not… which I don’t understand how that makes any sense at all, but whatever. I’m going to sleep and I don’t want to wake up for a month until I am cured and can live a life that I can actually accomplish things in. this is my life though and I think I knew what I was getting into when I came down here. These are my trials, and one way or another I’ll figure out how to find peace in this life, and if not here I’ll have it in the next that much I know.     

Get Low

O my goodness, well, it is official. At about three o’clock last night something really awesome happened. I fell in love… with an amazing movie. Get Low had no trouble entering my heart as a beautiful movie that is truly remarkable. Robert Duvall as Felix Bush portrays perfectly a self isolated hermit who has come out of the woods to throw a Funeral Party for himself while he is still alive! Sissy Spacek plays Mattie Darrow, the only person in town who knew Felix from years before, and Bill Murray plays the funeral director who puts on Felix’s Funeral Party.

It will make you laugh, it will break your heart, it will cause you to love and see the goodness in people. I think the movie is beautiful and I love it very much so. I definitely recommend it to anyone who has been yearning for a half decent movie to watch lately. I think I should be a movie critic. I think I am a movie critic. I know what movies are good. I know what makes a good movie. I know what movies are not worth a thought in the head, which are in my opinion more than half of the movies that make it to theaters, but through the infinite, frivolous trivialities of movies that are made there are a few that really get it right, and Get Low is one of them. I think I need a top ten movie list now… sigh…   

Episode 1, Top 5 With Jake: Movies

Episode 1 of, Top 5 with Jake

Movies

Aladdin is the all time best movie ever made. I think when it gets right down to it there is a Disney character that everyone can personally relate to. Aladdin is mine. Let’s just say, if I grew up on the streets of Agrabah I would be the one hopping roof tops, dodging royal guards, and saving the princess. Though like all Disney sequels, the animation, story, and all around quality of Return of Jafar was lacking, and the quality from the Return to The King of Thieves was even more disappointing, the concept of Aladdin and even the sequels are far better than any other Disney reincarnations. I mean really, Pocahontas 2, Journey to a New World… please…

Quotes:

Genie: [as Jack Nicholson] All right, sparky, here's the deal. If you wanna court the little lady, ya gotta be a straight shooter. Do ya got it?
Aladdin: What?
Genie: [pointing to each word on a blackboard] Tell... her... the *truth*!

Batman The Dark Knight ranks up there in my top five because it is just put simply, an incredible movie. Truthfully I was not a fan of Batman Begins but the Dark Knight more than did it for me. It is passionate, it is heartbreaking, it is beautiful, it is psychotic, it is dark, it is intense, to put it simply once again and there is nothing much more to say other than it embodies perfectly what I think a lot of movies try to do but few ever accomplish. It is art. That is it.

Quotes:

Harvey ‘Two Face’ Dent – “Have you ever had to talk to the person you love most? To tell them it’s going to be alright, when you know that it’s not?”

Inception is a more recent development for me. I usually don’t like to put a movie on my top movie list until a few years have gone by since the first time I saw it, because it gives me time to understand if I was just infatuated with the movie right off the bat and it ultimately really didn’t mean that much to me. This movie however, I believe is the exception. Call it an obsession, call it psychosis, call it mental insecurity, but I have often felt as Cobb did in this movie, the silently tortured soul who knows the importance of doing the right thing regardless of how painful it might be, whilst still holding on to that hope of goodness that you’re not even sure is a possibility anymore but nonetheless you can’t help but to still hope. I know that a lot of people don’t like Leonardo DiCaprio, and I understand why they don’t but I actually appreciate his talent and enjoy his films. Despite what others say about his acting skills I think he really is a good actor, and I think he did an exceptional job of solidifying that fact in this movie.

Maybe I relate because I feel as though I’ve swam the shores of my subconscious and have wondered if I really am just lost in a dream that I can’t escape from. Maybe I need a totem… wait a minute, I have a totem I just realized, but if this is indeed a dream right now than my totem is inevitably skewed by my own dreaming subconscious in its ability to tell me the difference between the waking world and the dream world… what to do, what to do… I just don’t know.

Quotes:

Cobb: I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.

Newsies, ah Newsies, I love you, that is it. You make me feel young again, and also like grabbing the ceiling fan and spinning and spinning and spinning until my head pops off while a group of kids dance and sing throughout the restaurant I am trying to eat in. The old New York style setting run by gangs of poor Newsies inspires me to…I’m not sure, but it definitely inspires me, especially when I think about Crutchy. I love you Crutchy.

Quotes:

Crutchy: It's this brain of mine, it's always makin' mistakes... it's got a mind of its own.

Enemy Mine is one that is an odd oldie that I’m not sure how many people even know exists. I think it is one of those epic nerd movies like, but much more obscure and unknown than 2001 A Space Odyssey, War of the Worlds, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost in Space. Not a fan of Dennis Quad at all but I like the movie, what can I say. I don’t know if it is an easy movie to appreciate or even watch because it is similar in some ways to Cast Away with Tom Hanks in the fact that there are a lot of long, no dialog scenes of survival. Basically a Human and a Drax, two enemies, crash land on a desolate planet, find each other and learn to overcome their differences in order to survive on the planet.  It gets a little weird when Willis finds out that his new friend “Jerry” is pregnant… but the premise of the movie is great and you just have to accept those strange things… I realize it takes a certain type to appreciate a movie like this but I do appreciate it for its albeit cliché moral values in overcoming differences and coming to the knowledge of goodness in others one might even consider an enemy.

Quotes:

Davidge: "If one receives evil from another, let one not do evil in return. Rather, let him extend love to the enemy, that love might unite them." I’ve heard all this before... in the human Taalmaan.

Jerry: Of course you have. Truth is truth.

It's time to talk...

Well, I suppose it’s time to talk about something I’ve alluded to for some time now, but have never gone into detail about. The truth is, I have been severely troubled in my life. I frighten myself sometimes and it makes me cry. I just want to be healthy in body and in mind, and in spirit. At the same time I have all of these feelings, I am optimistic of the future. I really just need some good help to get my mind stabilized in a consistent pattern of healthy thinking. I just want to be happy, that is really all I want. I think that there is going to be a time when I’m going to look back and say to myself something like, “Wow, that was an incredible time and I am so glad I can understand the purpose in it.”

 Can someone as troubled as I’ve been really make their life into something wonderful? That’s what I want to do with all of my heart. That’s what I desire. I think that I scare people sometimes and that makes me really sad, because I don’t want to scare people at all. I really just want to be so happy with my life, and that doesn’t mean I have to have a specific job or be with a specific person. It simply means that I want to be free from the troubles that my mind causes me. I feel hindered by barriers in my mind that I can’t figure out how to get passed.  I do have desires and things that I wish I had, but I think if I was completely healthy in mind I wouldn’t get so stuck on emotional events that obviously will take place in the course of a life time.

I am leaving this Sunday to Fairfield, California for a complete mental health check and overview, courtesy of my mother. Mental health issues are pretty rampant in my family we’ve learned the hard way through plenty of experience, and my mom wants me to get as much early help as possible so I can live a legitimately healthy and well balanced life. I haven’t really told anyone this because of what it might mean. It means they might find out that I’m schizophrenic, or that I might have a brain tumor, or any number of devastating things like that. Truthfully, I am not afraid of dying because I know that I can be powerful in my thoughts and actions through that process, but I am afraid of this whole mental health thing because these types of problems change the way you think and make you act different than who you want to be. That makes me cry, because I want my mind to be clear so I can be happy and cause those around me to be happy. I just want to love and laugh and live a great life with those I do love. Sometimes I am afraid of this thing so much, but other times I think that it will really be alright no matter what. I think of my sister Elaine, she did some pretty awful things, and my family was completely taken back, shocked, and devastated when she did those things. It was after certain events I’ll not mention that she was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia. Because of those things she did she will now, never be able to live a normal life, but if we had known more about mental illnesses then, all of those things could have been prevented and she could have more or less been able to live normally at this time.

I will continue to write though regardless of any outcome. There are moments when everything is so perfectly clear and I can see the world in such an amazing light, but other times it’s like everything is dark and that is when I’m afraid.