haunting fear

I'm taking this Philosophy class called, The Ways Of Knowing.

I should have realized this but intelligence scares me. AND, in this class I read things that are intellectually challenging therefore, I am scared.

I believe I have created this wall of protection that I am okay with not knowing. I limit my own capability of going beyond my fears of knowing. I think Im afraid of the experience. In high school I was surrounded by teenagers who were ADDHD, depressed, anxious, bipolar...etc and can clearly remember me turning my eyes from them or feeling "bad" for them as if we could not "relate" at all. Well, "them" has become my family and just like my own nuclear family, I constantly battle letting them close to me, forgiving, or living them.

You see, I knew what a mental illness was, i read all about it, but when experiencing the mental illness, it takes anyone to a whole new level of knowing. Today, the argument of the Philosopher Russell was, "In order to have knowledge we need to be able to tell the difference between a hallucination and perception." When I was in the thick of my illness, I was conflicted with reality and what was happening to me. Bipolar sickness was a tormenting time because your perception becomes altered...and your mind becomes overloaded with thoughts and eventually you experience hallucinations, but with medicine those hallucinations become extinct. The fear haunts me, the fear that my brain will be beyond my control again and that I will be scared again, scared of me....terrified of my own ability to think. So, with lots of therapy, art, and writing as my outlet, the mourning of my loss of self is decreasing, but is so ever present. Sometimes I'm thankful and some times I weep at this discovery in me. This is my reality. It is me. An ugly thing that is beautiful.

Dear The Ways of Knowing, please be ever so gentle to me.