All of my fiction is autobiographical. I admit it. However, I can't tell which characters ones are, so to speak, me. The women come closest. Add ten percent of the men, stir, salt, boil, and you might have someone approximating me. Not a clone. Who needs a clone? Aren't any of us more than enough?



If you answered no, you're one of the reasons I'm paranoid. Not because I'm particularly suspicious all of the time but because everyone might have answered no and how would I know? I can only guess. And that's the problem.



Here's the truth I could do without. I tried to live in the haze, a chemical haze neither high nor there. But artificial serenity causes a rare skin cancer that only appears on the imagination. The imagination is my skin. Or what's left of it. After the haze.



Back to the truth. The following began as a personal message. Despite a few minor alterations, duplicating the original message is the only way to tell this truth. 



This benzo withdrawal has immersed me in the most intense anxiety and physical discomfort I've ever experienced. There is some improvement that waxes and wanes, I've been almost forced to deal with some issues that broke through, you might say, the incredible wall I've built both consciously and not. With a little research, I've come to the unavoidable conclusion that at the very least, I have some definite paranoid tendencies which, while often disguised and usually buried, have often enough emerged into the daylight of my actions and wreaked havoc throughout my life.



This is the answer to my oft-asked question, "What in the hell is wrong with me?" The anxiety, I believe, largely emanates from those tendencies, a hyper-form of social anxiety, but way beyond that. In other words, probably diagnosable, for whatever that's worth. No hallucinations, etc. Not even a constant suspicion but a situational one, always worse in stressful environments like a job or most of all living with rather than visiting a group of people. Examples include dorms, detox centers, etc.



These traits, I think, merge with my "pure obsessive" OCD, and because I have some evidence of the disasters these traits have generated, the worst fears of OCD seem justified. It all fits together, a puzzle that constantly tries to assemble itself but which I have managed to launch into space and out of my perception with pills, alcohol, or anything I could get my hands on. But something beyond anxiety and OCD always loomed, just beyond my purposefully-shrouded perception.



Well, now it's undeniable. This
supports my thesis: Last night, while fully accepting that these traits existed, supporting evidence in the forms of memory came rolling in like storm clouds. But they mysterious dissipated before I tried to describe them, which I planned to do when I resumed talking after a movie. I "caught" some of these memories, but the ones that faded told me how well I had trained my mind to reject an awareness of these traits and the word "paranoid," which is still the correct diagnosis in a much lesser form despite a connotation that gives people the wrong idea.



More accurately, my version entails anxiety based on extreme guardedness,
an easily-triggered sense that I've been exploited or insulted (which has ruined
my relationship with several agents and publishers, along with romantic
relationships right on down the line), and the feeling others know my every
weakness and how fragile I am when it comes to these reactions.

As a kid
and adult, there have been times when one or a group of people pick up my
paranoid signals and figure I would be an easy target for ridicule. That almost
always happens when I'm extremely stressed. It happened a few times in detox.
It's happened when I transfer schools, join a new team, anything like that.
Throughout my life, I frequently publicly hang my "daily emotions" out to dry
while absolutely vouchsafing any of what I'm telling you -- in other words, it's
always half the story.



Sometimes, I find the War Mask, and I've been told it's frightening. This
is very rare. It happens when someone challenges me "to a fight," not a physical
fight but, as in one instance, "Hey, Paul, come on, rip on the bass guitar for
us." "Nah, I'm sick, leave me alone." "Come on, man." Pissed off, I picked up
the bass and played a five minute groove that astounded not only them but me,
but they all said the look in my eye before I did it was "kind of scary."  I
suppose I took this as a challenge to my manhood. My instincts were triggered. I
rose to the task with a vengeance. But usually, I collapse in the face of these
challenges. More often, I avoid confrontation altogether, ensuring a neutral
non-result.

The other thing I've read about this syndrome that rings
absolutely true is an extreme defensive stance rights being "violated."  But
when constantly told to "watch what you post online," don't you presume someone
is watching? With perspective, I can even say no to that question. It would be
enough to make everyone think someone is watching what they post online. And
that is exactly what happened. But, you see, this requires only enough genius to
realize the power of suggestion. To actually impose a conspiracy of censorship is impossible. To suggest it's your job or shut your mouth is
genius.

Otherwise, when I use the term "paranoid," I mean I'm often the mind that "Almost
everyone is out to screw me, the Constitution is bullshit, every boss has or
will fuck me over, girlfriends can only be trusted after about six years of
faithfulness (despite whatever I do, of course), and, the most common element of
all, when someone is making noise or otherwise irritating me, they know it's
irritating me and proceed with malice." All of these have ruined aspects of my
life so many times I couldn't possibly remember more than a few examples.



I guess I will just have to adjust and take this crazy-feeling admission
as a way to identify and avoid acting on those feelings. Also, paranoia comes
with the benzo withdrawal territory. Still, these memories go all the way back
to the start of my memory, and the realization had the bell-ring of
long-suppressed truth.



The drugs froze me out. You can see why I'd respond so favorably to that
even though it was ruining me. It was relief from guardedness, fear of myself
and everyone else, and probably most of all, fear of discovering and admitting
these traits, which I am positive collapsed on my head every time I ran out of
pills and then all the more so when I was forced to get off them.






So, this is where I'm at. I'm finally writing a
little but only when an idea drags me to the computer. Otherwise, I don't find
the process worth pursuing. But I am picking up a little steam. As you can
imagine, all of this needs to be filtered and digested, somehow, if possible,
and there's no medication, only therapy, of which I could afford about one
minute per month.



For
the time being, think of me as having put together a jigsaw puzzle, one I don't
want on hang the wall, much less convert into all the walls, but also one I also realize I can no longer leave
it in the trash, where it rots. Life means fear. Not only that. But that first.





There's the truth. I will sign the contract to write a memoir now. I need money. And I didn't even begin to offer details. If you only knew. But that will cost a lot of money.



Anyway...



That book, over there, to the left, was written by a paranoid. I'm the paranoid. I'm proud of that book more than anything else I've accomplished. More than anything else I've conceived. I set and met my goals exactly.



True, the book landed around the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 but nowhere near a bookstore full of airplane novel readers.No, they were at home, stomped by the permanent economic correction. I would prefer to call it an error but, unfortunately, it's the inevitable and uncorrectable result of the global slave economy. The perfect economy for those who prosper in it. Is that paranoid? Who cared about 9/11 when the economy collapsed for good? How could a few thousand dead people compare to...pretty much everybody? It was enough to make me lose my head. I didn't. I saved it for later, and it arrived five or so months ago, when I decided I could not sustain the haze. I could no longer obtain the chemicals to create the haze. Game over. But my novel is still better than yours.



Anyway...



Yes, I'm paranoid. I know you told me so. And now I'm telling you. I know. It's not the end of the world, my world or my story. It just changes them.