I used to have strong beliefs in color symbolism. I only wore red, black and white. The colors together symbolize honor in Japanese culture, that was part of it, but I believed myself to have three moods, and only three moods. Survival, pain and rage, respectively white, black and red. I still wear these colors almost every single say, just to remind myself of what I have been through.
I am fully recovered and very highly functioning, functioning more highly than the majority of normal people. However, this is recovery due to medications, if I were to skip my meds for a day, I would end up screaming at myself in the shower and break inanimate objects and drink all of the alcohol in sight. That was a normal night for me before I began my recovery, which was a slow process.
But anyway, survival, white, was my academia- I was and still am on a full scholarship to college, and I made mostly A’s and a few B’s whilst psychotic and unmedicated, drinking loads of caffeine in the day and even bigger quantities of alcohol every night. I had a cumulative 3.5 the day I began taking meds and began recovering, slowly.
Pain was the color black. I spend most of my free time alone, drunk, and sore from excessive exercise, chain smoking marlboro reds with a bottle of fireball whiskey in my other hand. I didn’t sleep much, I sat in my backyard smoking and drinking in the AM.
Red was rage. When I woke up, I was paranoid, delusional, hallucinating and above all, angry, in fact absolutely irate. I thought everyone was against me except for my one friend, my drinking buddy. I remember sweating and gripping my desk in class, keeping myself from screaming and bashing my head against the desk, which i always wanted to do. I would lift weights, not powerlifting but bodybuilding so that I could feel a burn and workout longer, (now i am a competitive powerlifter, whole different game), i would bare-knuckle box on my punching bags, (I have a few belts in Krav Maga) and I would sometimes run as well. I took everything to an extreme, I got looks from people at the gym because they noticed that I was lifting too heavy for someone my size and that I was working out for at least an hour and a half without stopping to talk to anyone at all, I just kept my earbuds in and blasted Slipknot louder than my voices.
Red and white was what I wore in the summer after my first year of college and my first year and a half with schizophrenia. I had survived, and I was free to exercise all day for a few months before the fall semester. I began medication at this time, but it didn’t really work until November, when I began a high dose of Geodon and also a relatively low dose of xanax and a high dose of propanolol.
Black and white meant survival and pain- bascially, to me it meant do or die. Today my knee wraps for squats and black with a white stripe, my training shoes are black and white, my lifting belt is black, elbow support sleeves are black and my wrist wraps are red.
I am recovered and do not have a delusional attachment to the colors, but they will always be a part of me, we humans are accumulations of our experiences, and I have been insane and learned a lot about myself from it.
Yes, I just posted in the delusions section. I am not psychotic anymore, I just wanted to share what I think was the most interesting and (to me) most beautiful aspect of my experience with being raving mad.
