"The chief of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings which Nature gives to man there is none greater than an opportune death; and the best of it is that every one of us can avail himself of it." Pliny

The above quote is as referenced by Schopenhauer in his treatise 'On Suicide'; a seemingly recursive method of emblazoning a trite Open Diary entry page with an abstruse yet pertinent precursor to the main body of text, I concede. But it would be gauche of me to tacitly infer that me and Pliny the Elder had actually engaged in some sort of firsthand social contract through which the procurement of said quote was a mere corollary. When in fact, it was solicited by the arbitrary means of firing off the name 'Schopenhauer' into the searchable archives of a suicide newsgroup, thereby vicariously feeding off of the synoptic wisdom of fellow suicidal depressives, whom I am now mindful of not having also referenced in this fluvial cadre of moral copyright.

To be quite blunt, Schopenhauer's Pliny citation had been expressly more than I'd bargained for having initially been in search of a prefatory quick-fix. After all, I didn't wan't to improperly attribute the quote solely to Arthur Schopenhauer when he'd gone to the overt trouble of sourcing material. I seemed to be standing pensively before an impermeable hall of mirrors.

My Axis II symptomalogical languor also had its ante considerably upped when the added wrangle of quote source discrepancy between Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger came to light. It did not escape me that there was a potential undiagnosed case of Multiple Personality Disorder somewhere amid this search for a poignant yet out-of-context epithet about snuffing one's candle. Although given the perapatetic paper trail already established, one suspects a NEO Five-Factor Inventory would be near impossible to send out.

I fear I may have ventured off the beaten track somewhat in regards to peppering my Open Diary introductory page with a virulent curve ball of quote-led enticement. If only I had recourse to the heteroglossia of hybrid brands of Gaelic, Russian and Latin often found availing Open Diary members in their artifice.

By way of introduction and in an Adlerian attempt to jockey for position in this morass of public confiteor, I feel it may be a smart move to lay my synaptic cleft bare with a quick bold-type abetted compendium of Erik H. Erikson's eight stages of development as applicable to my own schemata and psychological history. So buckle up! And if you happen to be in expansive mood, why not also lock the latch plate? I'll think you'll find the sky looks decidedly aquamarine through the synthetic sheen of the windscreen, the fusiform gyrus is but an errant child...

(1) Infancy: trust versus mistrust.

(2) Early childhood: autonomy versus shame and doubt.

(3) Preschool: initiative versus guilt.

(4) School age: industry versus inferiority.

(5) Puberty: identity versus identity confusion.

(6) Young adulthood: intimacy versus isolation.

(7) Middle adulthood: generativity versus stagnation - speculative projection.

(8) Late adulthood: integrity versus despair - speculative projection.

Give or take a few presuppositions, I think it is safe to assume that I'm suffering from an interminable sickness of the soul showing no sign of abating.

I've been harbouring this veritable nest-egg of suicidal and self-destructive fervour for the better part of my whole life (save for maybe the guile of foetal tabula rasa) and its really beginning to bear the dividends. The epigenesis of a gamut of depressive symptoms have conspired to produce one hell of a maladaptive recluse. Every single day is a Peloponnesian war of impulses, intractable anxiety, and thanatotic psychosis, and in submission to my need to make overarching metaphors, I think I'll have to imply that the Spartans also figure large somewhere in my reclusive despair, just to save face. It's easier to concede to schizotypal delusions of 5th Century BC Ancient Greek revelry than to embark on the convoluted process of backing down from an ill-conceived analogy. It's these sort of self-laid booby traps that nearly got me classified as homicidal because I'd made a point of impressing my psychologist with use of the word 'parricide'.

Continued in my introductory entry...

"Our language, Tiger, our language, hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of possible legitimate new ideas, so that I can say this sentence and be confident it has never been uttered before in the history of human communication: "Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers." One sentence, common words, but never before placed in that order. And yet, oh and yet, all of us spend our days saying the same things to each other, time after weary time, living by clichaic, learned response: "I love you", "Don't go in there", "You have no right to say that", "shut up", "I'm hungry", "that hurt", "why should I?", "it's not my fault", "help", "Marjorie is dead". You see? That surely is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Stephen Fry (from A Bit Of Fry And Laurie)