About me, you will probably never know who I am. Call me Stand. Please don't try to discover who I really am, because I know there are ways to do it — I would rather be anonymous. When no one knows who this really is, I can be totally free to dump the raw contents of my mind, more or less unfiltered.

What is H13? It is a journal of my story. Everyone has a story of his or her life, this one is mine. The "H" has a certain special meaning in my life, though I can't tell you what. Sorry. Let me tell you the things I can: I am a Korean-American man who, at separate points, has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression. I have been institutionalized 5 times through the two main "episodes" of madness, the first having lasted from July 1991 through about April 1997, the second from about August 2001 through the middle of October 2001. My story is scattered through this site. I actually went through the second episode while this site was up. May prove interesting reading.

Some geography: born in South Korea; moved to the U. S. while quite young; grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia; went to college in Pittsburgh, PA, where the madness onset; stayed with my parents in that suburb of Philadelphia during much of my first episode (with a layover in Korea); graduated college after many years and moved to San Francisco, CA; it was in San Francisco where my second "episode" hit. Before the episode, I held down a job for almost 3 years without incident, and it was not because of the madness that I left it. It was boredom. After the second episode, I lived in the East Bay Area, staying there for about two years, then restlessness hit me again. I moved to Seoul, Korea, and lived there for two and a half years, but now I am back in the US, residing in the great city of New York.

What is madness like? I ask you, what is sanity like? I wish I remembered. I know what you're asking. Let me tell you that madness is like dreaming while you're awake, but where the dream is so ever present you've accepted it as reality (or at least part of reality). And there's nowhere to wake up to. Sometimes it's scary. Sometimes (odd times) it's funny. Yes, insanity can be fun. But even when you laugh it hurts. Hurts a little.

About the site, the Home page you've probably seen, done up in weblog fashion with the most recent posts first. Sorry if I seem scattered, it's just that I enjoy this format that I can put up whatever happens to come into my head — so a lot of it is in no particular order. Please feel free to comment on my journal entries, though I reserve the right to delete anything which isn't on topic or are just blatant advertisements. The About page you're reading now. If you want to find out more about me, read through the stuff I've posted, included in the Archives: all my posts, arranged by month. The Best page is a list of the entries which I feel are the most notable of those that I have written. (They link back to the entries themselves.) Randomness is 35+ random images, one of which will pop up when you click this link. Click it again to get a new one. Story is where I have collected from the journal entries throughout the site the story of my first, long schizophrenic episode.

Enjoy, if that's at all possible.