Why make a difference (an interview with TEMPOK)

So straight to the point: why do you want to make a difference in the world?

“Firstly, I lack a wide emotional range (probably due to a combination of the psychosis and antipsychotic medication) and the little feeling I do have I tend to supress because it is just too painful to engage with; so I guess because of that I see the world in a less human way.

“I don’t succumb to emotion or feel great empathy when I see suffering; instead what drives me is logic.

“It makes sense to help each other out because if there are enough resources available and if technology is as advanced as it’s supposed to be, then why is everything so biasedly distributed, and why are the majority of people suffering when their suffering could be avoided?

“I don’t care about the vast majority of people on the planet, but I recognise that they are suffering needlessly and that doesn’t make sense to me.

“Everyone should have the same chance to live and I want to help people realise this.”

Hold on, so you don’t care about the vast majority of people?

“That’s right – although saying that I do have some feeling; but it’s kept firmly on a very short leash for most of the time; I am gradually becoming more able to engage with it but only very slowly.

“At the moment I feel somewhat disassociated from my emotions; I do things because that is the way I have worked out (from observing others) that they should be done, instead of how I would personally do them. I don’t actually know how I would do things; I don’t seem to have developed that ability yet.

still life

“I sometimes wonder if I am now going through the kind of emotional development that generally happens during a child’s development, but which I’m having to go through it in an unnatural way because I am now in my late twenties and am only just getting started.

“So yes, I’m not really able to care in the emotional sense. However from such a standpoint it is hard to agree with people who seem so focused on their own gratuity; but maybe the way that they are is just the natural way to be.”

Interviewer: The voice in my head

Date: 11/02/2014

I’m a monster

They call it schizophrenia. I have violent and sexual images in my head some of the time which can be very distressing. I try and tell myself that it’s just my brain saying, “What’s the most horrible thing we can make him think? I know!” and then bam, you’ve got intrusive images/urges.

Being diagnosed took much of the distress away because suddenly I wasn’t this awful, evil person anymore. However every intrusive thought that enters my head makes me question whether I am mentally ill or just a very, very bad person?

It’s not so bad when I get the urge to pour hot coffee over a crying baby’s head as that is so fantastical that I know it’s an intrusive thought. However having sexual thoughts about people who are close to you does cause a great deal of distress because they can be arousing.

I guess it’s only natural for my body to react to sexual things and the fact that I consciously resent having those kinds of thoughts is a good sign. I just wish they weren’t so damn persistent!

The bed of life

The antipsychotic tablets which I take nightly are major tranquilisers so it is often difficult to wake up in the mornings. Then my now fiancée came along and when I struggle to wake up she is there to help me.

The other day I realised that it isn’t just actual sleep that she rouses me from; symbolically she has also woken me up in my life as well.

Following the trauma of my psychotic episodes (and without even really thinking about it) I shut myself off from the world. My body spent its days at home focusing on learning Japanese (long story). It did get out but it did so just a shell with no real personality or opinions.

Then my fiancée to be entered my life and somewhere along the way something clicked. I suddenly felt the tug of purpose trying to rouse me from inside my comatose shell; it may sound corny but she had given me a reason to live.

I didn’t break through straight away but the ball was rolling and it started with art. I had given up art when my illness first materialised but now I felt the push to re-embrace it. This was difficult to do because I was still mostly shut away.

I needed to process what was going on but I was too scared to throw open the flood gates. How it started I don’t know but I began to write; processing things a bit at a time and eventually forming concepts that I turned into paintings.

The more I did this the more confidence I was able to build and I gradually began to form opinions of my own­. Just like she does when I struggle with mornings, my fiancée had awoken me from the stupor that my illness had anaesthetised me into.