Dear Murtaza:

You are correct, I misunderstood the voice inside his head (I read some, including Wikipedia’s entry on the movie, and indeed, like you said, I was wrong).

“I was jealous of how the voice comforted him, in one scene of the movie.. the voice tells him ‘So you’re not a great actor! Who cares?” the way he says this, I remembered my voice, the same kins of  apathy, lost love and all life passion, and it say ‘Who Cares?’ Its undefeatable”-

– My thoughts/ my experience: I tried so hard to not care, for so long, I stayed angry, resisting the feeling of empathy for other people… I really tried hard, and I succeeded.. only I was so very unhappy, alone and lonely. However lonely you are, Murtaza- I can’t imagine a greater feeling of loneliness than I have felt year after year, for so long, so long that it felt like eternity.

Fast forward to now, it seems like getting back to feeling empathy for other people makes me feel a  togetherness, not alone/ lonely anymore. Empathy is like magic, in this context. It makes a big difference.

Notice I shared about my thoughts/  my experience- I realized only a short while ago, that this is the only way I want to write to you. In other words, I want to shift from telling you how your life is for you, to telling you how my  life is for me. The advantages in this shift is (1) It is far less arrogant of me- a good enough reason, I don’t need a second, (2) But here it is anyway: you can argue with me about what I tell you about how life is for you. You can’t argue with me about what I tell you about how my life is for me.

“the voice.. comforting (about)  everything I lose and lost.. it..  tells me ‘So what?’, when I compare it to a norime mind, I feel so much peace”- at peace is all I ever wanted to feel.

“In your first post to me, you said ‘Murtaza vs society’, I already won, thank to the help of medication, I now no longer need society nor want nor desire anything from it, both my desire of love and motivation to do things has been lost, and I do miss them sometimes but when I remember the GAD, and how I was living everyday, I say its worth it, it wasn’t needed anyway”-

– I am all for Murtaza being at peace. I hope the GAD lessens and lessens. It has taken forever for my anxiety to lessen little by little. It’s still there but less. I remember an experience I had, it now comes to mind: it so happened that I had an unexpected access to a particular drug (I was never into street drugs and the illegal drug trade), but I had access to this particular drug, I took it, and the most unbelievable thing happened: I felt perfectly good, and I mean perfectly good- not a single bad thought, not a single bad feeling (it never happened before).. and it kept going and going hour after hour and into the night. Of course, I had no desire to fall asleep, it simply felt too good to be awake.

Eventually I slept, and in the morning it felt almost as good, and the next day.. pretty good, and when the good wasn’t good-enough, I wanted more of that drug and took more, and the same happened. So, I took it again.. but then, at one time and the next, all that happened was that I threw up, no good feeling. What a disappointment. I took it again.. threw up, no good feeling. That was the end of it. But I remember how good I felt, never did I consider that it was possible to feel that good (in any circumstance) until that experience.

I didn’t watch Birdman, am not in the habit of watching movies anymore. But I bet the acting by Michael Keaton was good. At the time I very much enjoyed Pacific Heights (1990), and of course, the legendary movie Beetlejuice.

anita