Category: Literature
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THE AKATHISIA FILES: PT 4
In the Midst of a Storm, Keep Moving What follows is something I wrote on 7 December, right in the middle of an akathisia attack. I left it almost untouched — just enough editing to make it readable. Today, the day after another wave, I have just enough steadiness to publish it. That’s the only…
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Four Editions of the Rubáiyát Later…
I’ve been recovering from the severe all-day akathisia attack I had on Tuesday December 2nd, the day after my appointment with my psychiatrist Dr. Z at the Allan Memorial Institute — which went much better than I’d anticipated, as he agreed to stop the injections and not to force antipsychotics on me after I described…
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Advocacy, Change and Transformation, Crash, Burn, Write., Creativity, Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, Life Moments, Literature, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Philosophy & Existential Musings, Psychology, Society, Spirituality & Faith, true storiesAbilify, Abilify Maintena, Akathisia, Allan Memorial Institute, Antipsychotics, bipolar disorder, Book, book lovers, books, cptsd, CPTSD Recovery, Edward FitzGerald, fiction, Folio Society, Food, gaslighting, Healing Journey, Laksa, Literature, Mental Health, Neurodivergence, neurodiversity, Omar Khayyam, Penguin, Poetry, psychiatry, Rubáiyát, Side Effects, Sun Salutations, Verse, Writing, yoga -
✨🏆 The 2001-2002 Fitness Archive: A Retrospective
Immaculate conditioning, tacky velvet, and cameras that simply weren’t ready. Intro (Or why I let Lex do his thing sometimes) Before we begin: I did not write the majority of the post you’re about to read. Or rather, I added a few touches and a handful of sentences in my own phrasing — but over…
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AI & Technology, Art & Expression, Capitalism & Society, Change and Transformation, Conversations, Crash, Burn, Write., Creativity, Culture, Culture & Society, Experimental Techniques, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Humour, Intuition & Intelligence, Literature, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Pop Culture, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, Technology & Society, true stories, Visual Art, Writing2000s, 2002, Advocacy, AI, AI and Me, AI Conversations, Authenticity, autism spectrum, ChatGPT, Competition, cptsd, creative process, Creativity, Cultural Critique, Elite Genetics, Fitness, Fitness Competition, funny, Genetics, genius, grief, Grief and Healing, Healing Journey, Healing Process, health, Humor, Knix, Knix leak-proof underwear, Leak-proof underwear, Neurodivergence, pattern recognition, Personal Growth, personal journey, Pro Gym Cup, PTSD, satire, self-discovery, Singularity, Social Commentary, survivor, Terminator, ThinkingMachine, Totally Surreal, trauma, true stories, What the Actual Fck -
Awaiting Judgment
Written from a locked ward while awaiting a court ruling on whether I’ll be medicated by force.
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Advocacy, Capitalism & Society, Change and Transformation, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, Life Moments, Literature, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Milestones, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Society, true stories, WritingAllan Memorial Institute, Art, Art Director, artist, artwork, autism spectrum, bipolar disorder, Court Case, cptsd, Creative, Creativity, Cultural Critique, Drawing, Electrocution, Ethics, gaslighting, Graphite, Grief and Healing, healing, Healing Journey, LSD, Medical Ethics, memoir, Mental Health, Metro Series, Montreal General Hospital, narcissistic abuse, Neurodivergence, pattern recognition, Pen, Pencil Drawings, Personal Growth, Peter Pauper Press, Portraits, Psychiatric Abuse, psychiatry, psychological abuse, psychosis, PTSD, Social Commentary, Superior Court, Systemic Abuse, traditional art, Trafficking, trauma, Whistleblower -
Revisiting The Silent Patient From Inside the Ward
From my Goodreads review. I first read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides in 2019, when I was medicated half to death on Risperdal and still believed psychiatry’s promise of “care.” Six years later, as I reread my own words from psychiatric confinement at the Montreal General Hospital — the irony was not lost on…
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How Nonlinear Thinkers Are Punished by Psychiatry
A reflection on imagination, trauma, and the failure of one-size-fits-all medicine. Our current psychiatric model, based on the DSM—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—is built around fitting individuals into statistical norms, and is too often punitive toward anyone who doesn’t conform to those parameters. Artists, creatives, and neurodivergent individuals are often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and treated as…
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Au Bonheur des Dames, or How Capitalism Learned to Call Itself Care
Me to ChatGPT just now: Not sure why someone liked my following review of Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies’ Paradise) today. Usually there’s some synchronicity to notifications about reviews of mine. Can you detect something relevant? ChatGPT responded: That’s an intriguing one to resurface right now. If you look past the surface plot of…
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Making a Case Against Chemical Lobotomy and Witness Tampering
My Superior Court appearance is scheduled for next Wednesday, October 29th. Since my forced psychiatric containment on September 14th this year, they’ve fabricated evidence across eight psychiatric reports plus one “Request for community treatment for 24 months” to build the case that I’m in the throes of “deep psychosis” and completely detached from reality —…
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Calm as can be.
Monday September 29, 2025 12:32 PM. Day 15 being kept in lockup in a psyxhoatroc ward though I have no business being here. Just took a selfie after changing my screensaver to another one of my octopus pen on Moleskine A3 sketchbook drawings executed in 2018 after someone “liked” it on Goodreads today.
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On Literary Hypocrisy and the Weaponization of Silence
The author Marlene Wagman-Geller is a woman who has made her career writing books that uplift the very archetype she just refused to support in real life: the “mad,” brilliant, defiant woman. Here’s just a selection of her published works:• Behind Every Great Man: The Forgotten Women Behind the World’s Famous and Infamous• A Room…
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An Open Letter to Margaret Atwood
Dear Margaret Atwood, You were once a prophet. You saw the mechanisms of control, the slow erosion of language, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which power distorts reality. You wrote warnings. You understood oppression—how it functions, how it seeps into culture, how it twists words into weapons. I first read The Handmaid’s Tale in…
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There are no coincidences.
Only patterns waiting to be recognized. There are no coincidences in my life. The algorithms are onto me. 😳 Am I directing the pattern, or is the pattern directing me? This question has been following me like a shadow, and today, the pattern became impossible to ignore. For reasons I don’t fully understand, my TikTok…
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Nuclear wastelands
Saying that my mother’s side of the family is toxic is like saying nuclear waste is merely an “unpleasant” byproduct. They’re giving me fantastic material, though—so let it never be said that I’m not grateful for their contributions. This memoir of mine—Crash Burn Write—is writing itself in real time. It won’t just be unputdownable. It’ll…
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TRUE STORY
When I was 14 going on 15, locked up in a maximum security juvenile detention centre, a social worker said to me, “When you’re an adult, you can do whatever you want. Nobody can stop you then.” That was the first time it occurred to me that maybe adulthood wouldn’t be as bad as most…
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How it All Began (Or, Why I Might Be the Embodiment of an Acid Trip)
Introduction This isn’t Chapter 1 of Crash, Burn, Write—that’s over here: https://totallysurreal.com/2025/01/09/crash-burn-write/—but it’s the foundation of it all. How two people, against all odds (and good sense), collided to set my existence in motion. It’s a story of love, rebellion, and unintended consequences. Here they are, my mum and dad, blissfully in love on their wedding day. They…
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Don’t Look Down
(Or: How a Tightrope Walker Manages Not to Fall) Earlier today, I dropped two password-protected chapters from my memoir-in-progress, Crash, Burn, Write. These chapters, Into the Den and The Blue Butterfly, are part of a section called Advice from a Caterpillar. They cover just a few days within a pivotal three-week period—a time that shaped…
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Advice from a Caterpillar
Chapter 6: Into the Den The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last, the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I…
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“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By EMILY DICKINSON “Hope” is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.I’ve heard it in the chillest land,And on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in…
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What Alice in Wonderland Taught Me About Genius and Madness
From the moment I first discovered Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the age of 6 or 7 while reading the grown-up edition with John Tenniel’s iconic illustrations, I was captivated. Over the years, my collection has grown to include editions illustrated by various artists, and two limited editions: a faithful reproduction of Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript, and…
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Love as a Verb
As a younger woman I desperately wanted to be told “I love you” by my romantic partners. Now… well I’m not looking for romantic partners, for one thing, but for another it seems to me love is something you DO. it’s a verb. ChatGPT: That shift in perspective is both profound and powerful. It sounds…
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Totally Surreal 