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Writing this feels like trying to eat a plate for dinner that’s overflowing with food. You want to eat it all and get it over with, but there’s just so much to digest and shit out that the task becomes daunting. I have so much shit I want to say, and nothing but ample time to say it, but writing it right now, feels nothing short of overwhelming. I apologize in advance for any grammatical or syntax errors as I barely paid attention in grade school English class, and never quite made up for it. I also apologize for anything that may be taken offensively or triggering, that is not my intention. I guess let me start my first blog post, and hope for the best.
I just got back from a leave of absence from my stay here in
Michigan. Leading up to the LOA, I thought I had figured out how to maintain a
consistent feeling of being content, and no longer had to deal with anxiety. I
was fucking wrong. For lack of a better description, I was anxious as shit at
home. I consistently felt like I hadn’t changed enough, that I wasn’t
progressing enough daily, like I was fucked and going to be stuck in Michigan
for a lot longer than I ever wanted to be. It was kind of a nice wakeup call in
some respects. Being anxious as fuck showed me I still have road to pave, and
there’s still work to be done. I’m grateful for feeling like ass on my mini
vacation. Jumping from one social interaction to the next, never really shaking
the anxious ghost over my shoulders, showed me that despite all my efforts over
the past three months to progress… there’s still work to be done.
I’ve kind of come to an understanding that consistent happiness does not exist, and the idea of maintaining a constant feeling of elevated being is either the result of mania or drugs. No one can maintain that elevated feeling of happiness, it’s just unrealistic. Instead we work towards a feeling of content. Content is the real happiness in daily life. For me, maintaining that feeling of being content is much like balancing a spinning plate on some sort of pole. If you aren’t periodically nurturing the balance and spin of the pole, then the plate falls and shatters. If I’m not consistent with a few elements of life, then shit falls apart. Previously in life, when the plate has fallen and shattered before me, I’ve danced on the shattered pieces and then wondered why the fuck my feet are bleeding, and then proceeded to cry woe is me. Now I focus on maintaining balance and spin of the plate of life. I keep the plate balanced and spinning through proper eating, exercise, creativity, therapeutic musings, and a variety of distress tolerances. Sadly if the plate shatters, I still have a tendency to step on the shards, and scream FUCK, but I’m working on quickly picking up the pieces, getting a new plate, and getting the spinning balance back at play. All that is fun to be aware of, but my biggest issue is forgetting the simplest things in life. Forgetting to balance the plate, forgetting my life is in my control, or at least my reactions to life, forgetting that I alone must maintain myself through the right sources. I forget the simple elements in daily living that can help me on the path towards consistent feelings of being content. That’s actually one of the reasons I recently tattooed the words “Don’t Forget” on my thigh. It serves as a constant daily reminder to not forget all the little things that go into the balance and spin of the plate. To not forget the little things in life, and all the things that lead into it.
I’m just going to treat this post as the blueprint for the
inevitable posts to come. For those who don’t know I suffer from Bipolar 1
disorder with psychotic features. With that comes a whirlwind of side effects.
I often think I was misdiagnosed, and I’m secretly a bipolar 2 kid in disguise,
but that’s just because it’s been years since I’ve had a manic episode.
However… when I did have a manic episode… it truly was a manic episode, and it
reared its ugly head and forced its way into psychosis with no end in sight.
I’ve been struggling for the past four years to get my life back on track, to
no avail. I’ve attempted suicide, I’ve been institutionalized, and I’ve done
just about all I can to throw my life away. I’ve been so lost, scared, alone,
and angry for so long now that I can’t remember my life before all of this. I
remember being an asshole as a teenager. I remember some extreme trauma from my
early teenage years. I remember never feeling content long enough to think I
could ever consistently be okay. My life went downhill when my trauma
resurfaced around 10th grade. As a result of the resurfacing I slipped into a
major depression for a while, masked my sadness with assholish teenage antics,
and substance abuse. I’ve been kicked out of the house, kicked out of a
friend’s house, and forced myself to lead a life that would eventually lead to
myself snapping as a human being. I pushed myself so far to the edge, that
instead of jumping, I crumbled up into a ball and let myself slowly die inside.
This all sounds very melodramatic and bitchy, but I can’t begin to describe the
life I led the summer of my 19th year. I become an agoraphobic for a month. I
couldn’t leave the house. I developed three extreme anxious ticks, and I became
a hermit who just downloaded an endless stream of mixtapes off of datpiff. I
eventually shifted out of my agoraphobia and was able to leave the house at
night, and that’s when the mania began. I Think I’ll save all this for another
day. I really don’t want to sound like a whiny bitch who wants the world to
feel sorry for him, but I have so much pent up. So much that I want to share
with the world, so much that I’ve held in for so long. I am the clog in the
drain of your sink, and on top of me is a sink full of water, forcing itself
down on me, and its crushing me. It’s a crushing weight that I want to
alleviate, and I want to work through it here. I’ve been in therapy literally
since I was three, and to no avail. I want to take part of my recovery into my
own hands and put it into writing and put it out into the world; In the hopes
that it will help me, and potentially others in the process. My problems have
plagued me for so long that they’ve bled into my creative world. Every story I
write now its riddled with mental illness and depression, the music I love is
miserably depressing, I can’t escape my problems, and now I’m going to force
them out into the world. I’m sitting here in my bed in Michigan at what will be
my last stop on the road to recovering listening to title fight, the whiniest
white boy band I could probably be listening to right now, and one line sticks
out to me “I never wanted sympathy, I just wanted to be something”. I just want
to rid myself of all this fucking water on top of me in the sink, so I can
crawl out of this fucking hole and feel the warmth of life on my face. I want
to remember a life before the one I know now. Thank you for reading this far if
you have, and sorry for being a whiny little bitch, I’ll stop apologizing for
it eventually, but as first posts go, I have no idea how this will be taken.
There’s a lot about what I’ve done, and that’s been done to me that I can and
can’t say, but we will see what the future holds.
Well, that was a fucking blast to write. I basically gave a
Destiny style plot of my issues (get it), and worked myself up more than I
helped myself, but I think in order to get everything out, I’m going to suffer
a bit. I just want to balance and spin a fucking plate to be content. I forget
that before I can only focus on that, I’ve got to kill off the demons that are
constantly coming at me, trying to knock down my pole and plates. Either way,
life goes on, and I’ll be fine. I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my day and
farm virtually, because real farm work sucks ass, and smells bad. Except
gardening, that’s pretty dope.
Ps. Play Stardew Valley… its so dope… you just run a farm…
plant crops... sell shit… and make friends with the towns people… its such a
positive little game… such a nice alternative to brutally murdering things.
I’m anxious as fuck today. I didn’t sleep well last night,
and it doesn’t help that I have to use my CPAP every night to even get some
semblance of normal sleep. I’m not quite sure what direction I’m going to take
this today. I wasn’t even going to post again so soon, but I’m fucking feeling
weird, so I figured now is a better time than ever. I kind of just want to cry,
and have a stream of letters and vowels run down my face until they form a
river of words that flows down the current into a lake, forming this post. That
sounds corny as fuck, but I think this is going to be a whiny ass post. I have
a lot of shit I just want to put out into the world, so I can get it out of me.
I’ve held a lot in over the years, and although I’ve told a few people, I haven’t
told enough people to help alleviate the power my shit holds over me. Letting
go of the past is such an obscure, abstract concept to me. How the fuck are you
supposed to let go of something that you don’t have a grip on? Something
sinister that is actually holding onto you, suffocating you, holding you back.
How do you loosen its hold? I’ve always thought that talking about the pain you
feel, letting it out of yourself, takes away the power it holds over you. It
loosens its reigns, relinquishing you from its control. I was really trying to
avoid bitching about my life in a post for a while, but I think it would really
help me today, and ideally it will help whoever decides to read this. Even if
it just helps you feel less alone, or helps you feel like everyone really does
go through some shit, I don’t know, I just want to help people in my quest to
help myself.
I can think of a few things I’ve done in life to deserve the
suffering I’ve endured throughout my life, but the things I’ve done to warrant
the pain has always been a result of some other sort of pain. I was never one
to just be an unwarranted fucking cunt for no reason, despite what some may
believe. Sometimes it felt like I was just born into being a sad dude. Which is
funny, because I have an amazing life for the most part; I’m bright, well
loved, financially stabled, attractive to some degree, well intentioned, and I
don’t know, I just have a lot of really good things going for me, oh, and I’m
stupid lucky. That’s what confuses me.
The universe clearly loves the shit out of me, but for the longest time it just
felt the need to endlessly dump shit on me, and I felt the need to help dig a
hole for myself and that shit, which I would then bury myself in. Once I was
neck deep in a self made hole full of life’s stupid bullshit, I started to
suffocate. To drown in the whole I dug for myself, and allowed life to fill
with self loathing and hateful events. My family loves me, my friends love,
strangers love me ,at times I love me, but for the longest time, all I could
see was the negativity in me, in life, and in the fucking hole full of shit
that I was living in. Yeah, life wasn’t always the most gentle with me, and
I’ve been in some situations that would warrant my actions, but it took me up
until now to realize that, the universe only gives you what you can handle.
When life gives you lemons, you suck the shit out of them and make a funny
face, and endure, because that’s what life is all about, enduring, and
progressing forward.
I
have literally been in therapy since I was three years old. At that age you do
what’s called “play therapy”… you basically just play with a therapist as they
lure your little ass into a sense of security so they can finagle some
questions out of you. My therapists name was Mrs. Suzanne, and she had a dope
ass mini sand box that I used to fuck with heavy. I have no idea, if I’m being
honest, as to why I was in therapy at that age, but my Mom used to say that if
a three year old could be depressed… I was the embodiment of it. Also my parents got divorced around that
time, and I guess that has quite the unforeseen impact on sensitive little kids
like myself, as that’s the only reason I can see as to why I’d be depressed at
such a young age, that or a weird early onset chemical imbalance. I eventually
stopped seeing Mrs. Suzanne at some point, only to then see the school guidance
counselor a lot. I never really did well in school, if I’m being honest. It
never really tickled my fancy. Why would I want to do what people tell me to do
when I have free will and can literally do anything I want? Why would learning
my ABC’s be appealing? Seemed like a stupid idea to me at the time, but I
wasn’t the brightest in my early years. Again, for lack of a better description,
I basically didn’t give a fuck about school from the get go. My mom practically
bribed me to pass kindergarten with this dope ass Yo-yo, and of course I took
the bait. I never really had problems in elementary school. There was some
light bullying with some anxiety sprinkled on top, but nothing life ruining.
Kids would make fun of my cloths, shit like that. I did run away once from the
cafeteria. The kids at my table were chanting “All, his, fault” at me because I
was the reason we weren’t allowed to watch some college basketball game. That
was p shitty, but I just ran outside, and then went straight to my art
teacher’s class room, where I calmed down. I can’t think of any real hiccups I
had in life when I was in elementary school other than the fact that forced
learning wasn’t appealing to me in anyway. My mom thought I had ADD, or some
other issue, and so as I graduated from 5th grade and onto middle school,
things got exciting.
When I was in middle school, I had a lot of friends, a lot
of girlfriends, was literally stuffed in a trash can more than once, and I had
such bad acne that I accidently scorched it off my face. It was pretty typical
stuff. Lots of pretending I could skate, pretending to fit in, to be normal.
Nothing really impacted me directly in middle school; it was kind of all under
the hood shit. Trigglypuff sighting incoming so beware; I did have one life
altering event go down when I was in middle school. I was molested by a
psychiatrist I was seeing at the time. I saw him twice, and hid the events from
my conscious mind until I was in 10th grade. At the time I have no fucking idea
why I didn’t tell anyone, or why I left his office and didn’t utter a single
word as to what happened in there. I pushed what happened to me then out of my
mind for a good three years, until 10th grade. After that incident my anxiety
started getting bad. My grades got even worse. I started acting out, and just
in general being a little teenage asshole. My mom knew something was wrong, but
she had no idea what it really was. I wasn’t even aware what it was. I just
knew I wasn’t okay. When I lived with my mom I spent a lot of time just sitting
in my room listening to The Used, Linkin Park, Underoath, depressing shit like
that. I used to write short stories about this chipmunk named Ace who was a
detective with some dope ass tools at his disposal. Damn, I really can’t convey
the sweeping wave of emotions you feel at that age. You’re high, then you’re as
low as you go, then you’re high again. Life was good; I was just an angsty
white kid from the county. Yeah, I was molested, but as far as I could tell I
wasn’t even aware of that event until 10th grade. The only real issues in my
life were battling with my mom, and her ridiculous punishments, and just
dealing with all my teenage feelings, and the meeeeannninggg (someone will get
it). I was sad though, but my life wasn’t in danger as a result of the middle
school sadness, I wasn’t really digging myself a deep hole yet. I was kind of
just playing in the sand at the beach. Digging holes for the fuck of it, and
then filling them back up, because it was all just in jest. Nothing was real
yet; life isn’t real when you’re still in middle school. In 8th grade I got
sent to live with my dad because I had runaway, had been acting out a lot, and
was constantly fighting with my mom. She figured a little male authority in my
life would be a good thing. Dear god, it fucking was. I like to think I peaked
in 8th grade. I have no idea what the fuck happened, or what I did, but
everyone seemed to love me in 8th grade. I made a ton of friends really fast, I
sifted through girlfriends like Pokémon cards, and I was just on top of the
world. My MySpace game was on point, I was going to local concerts constantly,
things were fucking phenomenal. So middle school was a hot mess of weird
feelings.
*Ring Ring* *Ring Ring*
“Hi, its high school, and I just wanted
to give you a call and let you know that everything you thought you knew, is wrong, and however good you were feeling,
it’s over. You’re about to feel like shit, and honestly, it’s kind of going to
be all your fault, you’re just too young to understand that it doesn’t have to
be.
*Click*
Fuck man, high school FUCKING SUCKED. Like yeah I was decent
at it, like I had friends, and girls liked me, and I was cool to some degree,
but 9th and 10th grade were hell. By 11th grade I was on the verge of just
becoming a giant fucking asshole, but that was just how I chose to cope. I
realized I had a chip on my shoulder, and I was testing the waters to see if
anyone dared knock it off. By 12th grade I was at odd future shows chanting
“Kill people, burn shit, fuck school”, I had fallen truly off into the asshole
end of the pool, and I fucking loved it. There really is something freeing
about being a fucking dick and not having a care in the world about others.
Honestly, if my life wasn’t oh so humbly shattered at 19, I probably would
still be an asshole, but I don’t know. My girlfriend has saved my life in more
ways than she’s aware, but I digress. Fucking 9th grade was like crushing up
pills of anxiety, and ripping mad lines before the start of each day, and then
riding that anxiety high throughout the entire day (that’s a metaphor for just
being super anxious btw). Everyone was so fucking big, and I was so small, so
insignificant, and so alone. As my first year in high school progressed, my
friend count decreased, and I can actually remember one kid saying “What
happened to Diggs, why doesn’t he talk anymore”. I couldn’t exactly tell you
what happened. Maybe this girl Becca broke my achey breaky heart? No, not that.
Maybe it was the thick ass lines of anxiety I was snorting? Not that either.
What the fuck ruined me in 9th grade? I still don’t know what it was to this
day. Despite how I was acting around to my peers, I spent the entire year
slowly crumbling on the inside. I became addicted to World of Warcraft, and
spent a vast majority of my time on there, because well, life’s easier online.
Can’t you tell? You are after all, reading about my life online. 9th grade
began my descent into true depression. I alienated myself form half of the
friends I made in 8th grade, I was a dick to the good friends I had, I was just
becoming this distant person, I stopped living in the real world, and began a
life on the internet. By the time 10th grade came around, I don’t remember
much, outside of each day dragging. The anxiety was gone, but the depression
was here to stay. Each day was like slogging through a quicksand that
constantly followed and surrounded me, dragging me down to its depths with each
passing moment. I am almost certain that to a vast majority of the people in my
life, I seemed fine. I am the best and acting normal, but really I’m not. I
slept through high school, read comics during, or daydreamed myself out of it.
One night in like March or something, I was up late venting to my Mom.
Something in my life was wrong. Something was so very fucking wrong, and I
didn’t know what it was. I asked her if a doctor was supposed to have you
undress in their office, their personal office, a psychiatrist’s office. I
asked her a few more questions around the events that transpired with that
doctor, and the molestation. Those events I had hid from myself for three years
became a reality. I was a victim of molestation now at age 15, the years prior
I was as well, but I had disassociated the events so heavily that I hid them
from myself entirely. I somehow decided I needed to move back in with my mom. I
had sunken into a deep depression at my Dads house. I always feared he thought
it was him, that he was the reason for me feeling that way I felt, which was
never the case. Something was wrong with me internally, I wasn’t okay, I wasn’t
whole, and hadn’t been for some time. The root of all my problems, my anxiety,
depression, lashing out at others, it was all part of the seed planted by the
psychiatrist. I’ve written a few short stories about him and that incident. I
think I’ve even written a script and a couple film treatments. The characters
are always Thom Trout and Doctor Fisherman. Anyway, I told my mom about the
doctor, I remembered roughly what happened with the doctor, the puzzle pieces
finally showed up on the table and began to fall into place. I then lived Spotlight
to some degree. I had to talk to the police and lawyers, and it turns out,
there were twelve other boys that had been molested by this doctor as well, but
they were too unstable have a valid testimony. I was the puzzle piece that
would help spell out a giant fuck you to this doctor. I was patient B in the
court case. I along with several others helped get his medical license revoked,
and subsequently ruined his life as he knew it. Looking back I wish I pursued
further action, but I’ve made my peace with those events, to some degree. So
again I moved. Now going back from my dad’s to my moms. Being the new kid, who
was kind of the old kid, but still new? Everyone knew me as Emily’s boyfriend.
What a swell title that was. I don’t know which high school I hated more, but I
came into my own at Dulaney. I forgot to mention that in middle school I saw
two therapists, Mrs. Suzanne for a second outing, and one guy who literally
told me nothing was wrong with me. He claimed I was making things up for
attention, little did he know, there was much more at play inside me, brewing
deep within. Now in 10th grade I went to therapy for the fourth time to see my
boy Bernie. Bernie was an ex hippie, turned priest, turned monk, turned social
worker. He was chill as fuck, and brought mindfulness into my world, and helped
me begin meditation. I saw him for the remainder of high school and into my
college years. In 11th grade I discovered 4chan, and the fun ability to troll
on facebook. I was basically a raging fucking asshole. I’d start fights online
with people, just too then give them my address and tell them to come fight me.
I knew no one would ever step up to the plate and actually come for me, but I
still put out the offer. I was just a toxic little asshole. I was angry at the
world. I was lost, and scared. I was alone. No one really ever helped me deal
with being molested. I was kind of just left to my own devices. So I looked
around me, saw a shovel, and started digging myself a big hole, because all
this shit that I had around me had to go somewhere, and I wanted to go with it.
Everything that’s gone wrong in my life is to some degree,
my fault. Yes, there are clearly some variables at play that, are in no way my
fault, but my reaction to them is my fault. It’s not my fault that the adults
around me left me to my own devices to deal with something as daunting as
molestation. It’s not my fault that I was molested. It’s not my fault that I
have a chemical imbalance. It is however my fault that I’ve been dug myself
into holes for years, and then cried victim until my lungs gave out. It’s my
fault for not doing more on my end. It’s my fault for turning to the wrong
things to take away my pain. Kind of don’t want to quote that Heroin Kills
video we all watched in high school, having never touched the stuff, but one
element of the video sticks out to me at this time “I DID THIS TO ME”. I alone
reacted to my reality the way I did, and handled it as poorly as I did. Looking
back now, I don’t except myself to have handled it any other way, but with the
gift of hindsight, I can see where I went wrong, and I can mend the wounds I
and others have inflicted. I never had much to gripe about in my childhood.
Yeah there was heartbreak, loss of friends, anxiety, and even molestation, but
for the most part, I was really fortunate to have a solid upbringing.
Typing
this out now, I feel like my actions and feelings as a teenager were moderately
unwarranted. I don’t think I went through enough to warrant being as sad and
anxious as I was, I don’t think I had the right to be as big of a dick as I
was. I don’t think I had it as hard as I thought I did as a kid. I always
thought I had it hard growing up, but I didn’t. I had one major event, followed
by rippling side effects, and that was about it. Everything else, everyone went
through. We all hated high school. We were all anxious. We all had teenage
heartbreak and friend loss. None of us really knew that we were truly in
control of our reality, but we were. I’m sorry if I hurt you when I was
younger, or took too much from you as a kid. This post wasn’t what I thought it
would be, and still isn’t as detailed as I’d like it to be, but I think for
now, it’ll do.
BLOG 3
Cause
and Effect
It was late October, maybe early November. I wasn’t really
taking my meds and I wasn’t minding my substance use. I was inhaling caffeine
and stimulants in fast amounts and coming down hard on the regular. After
months of this, and years of an intense depression, I snapped. I was at work,
playing out a normal day, everything seemed fine. I asked a coworker if he was
always tired, his response wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It left me to ruminate
on my self-hatred, and my overwhelming feelings of displeasure towards life. I
walked out of work, and proceeded to go to my girlfriends to get my things from
her place, then go home and sleep the pain away. I got in an argument with her
when I arrived; I beat my head with my fists in contained anger. I left her
place in a worse place than I had entered. On the drive home, I took a backseat
to my life. Something took the wheel and started driving, and it wasn’t me.
Time halted, and I was stuck in 11:30am for the next few days. My depression
drove me home. He guided me to my closet, dressed me in my favorite attire. A
hollow squad long sleeve, and olive canvas twill pants, with stance sugar skull
socks. He sat me down in my chair, gathered all of my medication in front of
me, and then whispered something in my ear. What he said to me, I don’t
remember, but he picked my hands up and used them to open up the lithium
bottle, then the zyprexa, the lamictal, the
abilify, and then urged me to take as many as I could. I watched as he
spoon fed me a handful of little orange pills that read 221 on one side. I
began to swallow pills until I was just throwing them up, and then picking them
out, and swallowing them again. I don’t know how many I swallowed, but it was
enough to make me comatose. Between my freaked out girlfriend, and worried
coworker, my mom reached me just as I slipped into a coma. I actually was able
to stumble into an ambulance, lay down, and answer a few question, before
ultimately slipping into a sound comatose sleep. The next thing I remember was
waking up screaming, six people holding me down as I struggled, and one unlucky
doctor struggling to shove a catheter up my dick. He was successful , and I
passed out again, waking up hours later in a hospital bed, now learning that I
had to live with the fact that I was unsuccessful at killing myself.
For a long time, like all of 2016, I was just waiting. I was
waiting for my suicide gate to lift, waiting for my chance to feel ready to
give it another shot, to successfully take my life. I was angry with myself for
not being able to successfully kill myself. How was I so shitty at everything,
that I couldn’t even successfully kill myself? I spent all last year trying to
push myself over the edge, to reach into the depths of my depression, and pull
from it, another attempt. I hid this from everyone. On the outside, I was fine,
a little sleepy, but I just appeared lazy. I was wasting my life away, waiting
for the next moment. I told myself when I was like 18, that I didn’t want to
live past 23. Ever since I was 19, my life has been a long fucking streak of
just depression and low level substance abuse. I’ve been miserable as fuck. I
never wanted to live this long, and I had plans to ensure that I would succeed
at my goal to not live to see 23. After surviving my suicide, after living out
most of 2016, I am finally ready to live. I am so ready to live. I want to pick
my shattered plate, my plate that’s full of all my fucking functions, and put
the pieces back together, one by one, and live. I’m really trying to avoid just
droning on being suicidal and depressed, because I am not in a good place right
now, and being suicidal is too easy to slip back into. It is a self conclusion
in one simplified motion. We have no choice in whether or not we want to live,
but we do have the choice to die. I am philosophically inclined to accept
suicide as a logical aspect of life. We had no choice in existence, so it only
makes sense that we would want to control when we wish to give it up. I don’t
think I will ever escape daydreaming about suicide entirely, or that I will
never think about it again, but for the time being, I just want to live. I want
to leave my Michigan pit, and get back to life. I want to live the life I’ve
always wanted to live. I want to be free of my mental setbacks, and the hiccups
I’ve encountered along the way. I may live with the idea of suicide for the
rest of my life, but that doesn’t mean I have to let it ever dictate any aspect
of my life ever again. Never again will
I give the reigns of an entire year over to it, and allow it to drag me
down to the fucking pits. At the top is a Bukowski poem someone once showed me.
I always think I have it figured out, until I read it again after a long while.
No one understands suicide, because it’s a personal venture, that is
personalized to each individual that undergoes its experience, both living and
dead. You can fantasize about suicide all day, and not be suicidal, and you can
be fine and happy one moment, and the next want to die. There are no rules to
this game. Everything is personal, and entirely up to the person living. No one
will ever understand why I wanted to leave a family that loves me, friends that
love me, coworkers that care for me, and a life ahead of me ripe with
potential, no one but me will know why none of that was appealing to me. I’ve
been through a lot in life that is my fault, and a lot that isn’t, and I wanted
control, and the power to end it all, in one fell swoop. I remember telling my
step sister about my attempt, and she said something along the lines of “Why
would you ever not want to see your beautiful niece grow up”, and I just
thought to myself, “No one ever entered my mind”. Suicide is an entirely
selfish act, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. When I was ready to die,
when I was swallowing all those pills, I was only thinking about myself, about
my pain, about what I’d been through. I never once stopped to think about
anyone else at all. Looking back on it now, the idea of not being selfish has
been the only thing that has stopped me from doing it again. In 2016 , I found
myself with a bed sheet tied around my neck, and hung a top the corner of the
door. Before I took anything further, I just sat, and thought. I thought about
everyone. I thought about how everyone would handle this. What would happen to
my family, my friends, my girlfriend? I knew it wasn’t going to be a full
attempt, because I was too present in the moment. I wasn’t being selfish in its
entirety. I untied myself, and lay on the floor crying for a while instead..
Thinking about everyone else, something I hadn’t done before, and it helped,
sadly. There were times I’ve harbored anger towards people in my life for
loving me, because I knew they were keeping me from killing myself. Looking
back now, with 20/20 hindsight, I am truly grateful for them, because if I didn’t
have the love of all the people that feel it for me, I would certainly not be
here typing this up today. There’s this song called Selfish by this band
Daylight and the chorus is “Only reason I’m still alive, can’t stand to ‘see my
mother cry, I’ll suffer through, only reason I’m still alive, can’t stand the
tears in her eyes, I’ll suffer through”. I used to yell the lyrics in my car,
I’d yell them until my voice went hoarse. As fucking corny as it is, old
daylight and title fight helped me a lot. I released a lot of repressed
emotions in my car to the tune of their music. Nothing feels better then being
physically tired from yelling along to melodic hardcore music in your car,
where no one but you can hear you.
If you’re feeling depressed or suicidal, talk to someone, tell someone, don’t hold it in, and don’t follow through with it. Someone is literally always there, whether you realize it or not, someone is always there.
— Pema Chodron ~ The Wisdom of No Escape ~ p. 76
Are we the sum of our memories? I suspect a happy man, or at least someone who is content, would say not. Personally, I think I have become the result of my past. A series of events I've deemed shitty have become what rules me, at least to some extent. I live in my past shit that’s happened to me. From event with the doctor, struggles of being a kid and the heartbreak that comes with it, mania, psychosis, suicidal ideation, and really just anything negative I’ve gone through. I think I truly have let my past dictate my present, and ultimately, my future. I actually just spent like an hour talking to one of my best friends. I kind of talked myself in circles, but I kept insisting that I needed to talk about my past. That answers lie somewhere in my past. A key is somewhere hidden in my past, a key to the door of the future. That is to some degree, most degrees, bullshit, but I’m still not over the thought. I’ve been through so much random shit in my life, and after having a psychotic break, I feel like some elements of my past deserve to be combed for answers, but what answers? What the fuck am I looking for? What the fuck do I expect to find in my past? I think I’m looking for closure of some sort. When I was manic, I thought I was reaching enlightenment, that enlightenment was a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel was light, and I was inches away from the end of the tunnel; constantly walking towards the light. I thought I was ready to shed my former self, to free myself from the shackles I’d bound myself in and become the self loving person I’d always wanted to be. Whether or not any of that is true, I wouldn’t know, I had broken away from reality at that point. Shortly after coming to this idea of enlightenment, I was hospitalized for a psychotic break, so to some, those were just manic musings. However, to me, I honestly believe I was at a point in life where I was able to start over and love myself. I am currently pretty damn convinced that if I relive those events in therapy that I will somehow remember what I used to think and feel about being free of my past, and I will magically be able to be happy, or at least allow myself to love me. That was kind of a leap. Let me explain. I was convinced I’d understood enlightenment. I wholeheartedly believe that was just basically a result of the mania. I do however believe that the thoughts and feelings leading up to that are attainable without the mania. I am thoroughly convinced that through reliving the events of my past, primarily what happened between the ages of 19 and 20, with a dash of some prior childhood events, I will be able to let go of my past, and finally be able to love myself for who I am, radically accepting myself. Is that a ridiculous thing to think? Am I chasing ghosts? I very well may be, but for the time being I think I am going to continue chasing them. I can see the revelation of beginning to accept myself, just barely, in those manic posts. Sure, there is a fuck ton of hatred in those posts, but if you look closely, I think I could see some semblance of self love. Maybe I’m delusional, I don’t know, my only goal currently is to love myself; to learn consistent self affirmation. When I was 19, I was ready to die. I had a near death experience with a coworker, I had PTSD, agoraphobia, panic attacks, mania, psychosis, I went through a lot and through all of it I was broken down to my most basic functions of existence. Through everything, the thing that stuck out the most, I just wanted to be myself; to unabashedly be myself, bells and whistles included. I don’t think I’m going to chase these ghosts in me free time, but I think at least for a few therapy sessions I’m going to continue chasing them. They’re like a bad itch that I can’t help but scratch, each stroke hoping the bother will fade away, but I doubt it ever will. I think I’m searching for a closure I never really will get. I don’t know. I just went through a lot, and in the end, lost my mind in the process. I had a goal when I went into construction. No one knows about it really except for me, and maybe my girlfriend. I wanted to break myself down. I wanted to see how much stress I could take before I snapped. I wanted to prepare myself, because afterwards, I was going to leave my life behind, and go the route of Alexander Supertramp. That was my pipe dream at nineteen. To tramp and lead a life totally unshackled by anything. I broke myself down, and as a sick punishment, became so shackled to society that I doubt I’ll ever live a life free of medication and shackles of some sort. I can think of a few reasons why I deserve this punishment, but that’s all in the past. I did this to me, in every possible way. I think there are a few answers to questions I have, buried deep within my nineteenth and twentieth year, whether or not I get those answers remains to be seen. All I can do now is progress forward. Up until this point, and in therapy, I will have lead a life where I am the sum of my past memories. As for the future, my life will be just that. The future; forward ever, backwards never.
I’m sitting here annoyed as fuck, listening to the Suicideyear boiler room set on youtube. One of my housemates pisses me the fuck off. They’re rude, crude, inconsiderate, immature, annoying, and just the fucking worst. They came into my room today, and reminded me of something. Through all my hospitalizations, and ventures into institutions of sorts, one thing that’s always been mine, has been my room.. Stay the fuck out of my room. It is my fucking zone, and it is the one place I can go to hide. Even at home too I guess, my room is always my oasis, but especially when my home is away from home. When I was in Pratt for the first time, one of the literal first things I did was manically decorating my little baron room. The room consisted of a bed basically nailed to the floor, a dresser made of wood, and a bathroom. No handles or door knobs on the doors and dresser. In the bathroom I had a shower right next to my toilet. I had to press a button that would release water in a piss poor pour for thirty seconds before shutting off. There was no furniture, and the glass on the window was thick as fuck. The room was basically suicide proof. I think if I really wanted to try and kill myself in a room at Pratt, I would have to use bed sheets and the corner of a door, and even then, the whole being watched constantly thing kind of ruins that. I’ve spent a little over a month in rooms like these at Pratt. Suicide proof hotel suits for the damned and suicidally wicked is what it was like. Back on topic though, the first thing I did, stepping foot into the young adult wing of Shepherd Pratts crisis unit was decorate. I ran to the crafts area and grabbed the biggest paper I could find, some crayons, and I made some posters. The paper on the inside of my door read “BASED IS HOW YOU FEEL INSIDE, HOWEVER YOU DO IT, STAY CREATIVE”, now I’m sure that’s a Lil B quote, but I took it from the intro to Based is How You Feel inside Badbadnotgood track. On the front of the door I taped a piece of paper up that said “I’m not like them, but I can pretend, I think I’m just happy”, I thought I was faking my mental illness if I’m being honest, it was a weird time. My point is, the first thing I did when I lost my home, was make a new one. I made one in the most unlikely of places. Every time I’ve gone back, I’ve decorated my room with quotes, magazine pages, and drawings. I spent a good three days there, my second term, ripping out pages of gorgeous women in Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazare to make a portfolio of hot girls; I would later just hang them up on my wall, and no, there was no ulterior motive behind that. I just wanted something appealing to look at. My third term in Pratt, I added onto that idea. I had quotes up, girls, and then basically anything from the magazines that was aesthetically pleasing. I made Pratt my home for the time being, and whenever someone fucked with my home, I lost control. The first term I was there, this big ex ballplayer was there with me. I don’t remember his name, probably for the best, but he was so far gone from reality that he was a scary and unpredictable dude. He had threatened me one night, and approached me in this really weird threatening manner, it was weird as fuck. Another night during group, he started going around to everyone’s room, stealing little things from them, and keping them in a shopping bag. He stole all my posters and quotes, and wore my Diggs wrestling sweatshirt around. I was sitting in the group room, and I just see the words “Diggs” walk by from the other side of the windows, just outside of the room. I fucking lost it. I thought my reality was breaking down. I didn’t understand how I was there in the room, and my shit was out there. I started beating the ground and crying, I just snapped. I ran out of the room at started yelling something, I forget at this point, but I remember being on the floor in front of the med station, just crying and hitting the soft paneled floor with my fists. I got all my shit back and went back to my room and just cried. My shit was invaded. The one space I had left to claim as mine wasn’t really mine. This place wasn’t a permanance. Everything else of mine had been taken away from me. All I had left attached to my life was whatever was in the room, and whatever I made it. This sounds kind of bitchmade, but when you are institutionalized, life changes. You’re broken down, and essentially are treated like a child. I am super attached to whatever room I sleep in for long periods of time, or places I consider home, and the first door on the left, of the left hand side of the young adult wing was mine, for two weeks. Anyone who fucked with it, fucked with me and my mindset. I had attached myself to this room, to this place that was just temporary, Through all my ventures into institutions, and living in rooms that weren’t mine, I’ve grown a little too attached to things that aren’t mine, and things that are just temporary. I don’t really know where to take this thought if I’m being honest.
So
I set out to write this post all about how, when I go to places to get help, I
get really attached to the rooms I stay in. Through writing this, I realized
that I get overly attached to something that isn’t a permanent variable. My
room could be change at the drop of a hat. I could have many different rooms in
just one stay. Fuck dude, I actually had two rooms in one stay at Pratt. How
the fuck did I forget that. I said some unsavory things about my roommate, and
it scared staff, and they moved me somewhere else. I think the point of this
post is for me to realize, that no matter where I go, I bring home with me. I
bring everything with me, and maybe that’s not always the best thing. When I
went to Pratt, I made myself at home, a little bit too much at home after a
certain point, I got so attached to a room, that I fucking freaked out when
someone else walked into it. I got so attached to a room here in Michigan that
I lock my door at all times because I’m paranoid someone’s going to come in and
do something. Maybe that’s okay though, some people aren’t to be trusted. I
digress; Home is where you make it. You can make anywhere your home, and you
can bring your problems anywhere you go. Moving doesn’t mean your problems go
away, they follow you until you solve them, that’s why they’re a problem. I’ve
made my home in places where some people would be unable to. My home right now
is in some group home in Michigan. I live upstairs in the coldest room in the
house. I have a Donnie Darko poster on the wall, a Tetsuo shrine, a bulletin
board full of shit, and little quotes everywhere. I can make myself at home
wherever I’m at, but can I solve my problems wherever I’m at? I’ve been unable
to solve them at home, maybe I’ll be able to solve some here.
The
Suicideyear set just got to a remix of Slipknot’s Left Behind, and I think
that’s a fitting place to end this post on. As fucking fruity as that shit is,
I’m going to leave behind all the negative shit I intended to harp this post
on, and instead take something positive out of this. Home is where you make it,
and you can’t leave behind your problems when you go somewhere new. Fuck this
feels like it doesn’t connect at all, but I don’t think I give a shit at this
point, I’m just glad I wrote something. My Google calendar says I was supposed
to be reading for the past hour, but I’ll settle for writing this jumbled mess
instead. Seriously though, my housemate is an asshole.
BLOG 6
When I was about ten or eleven I discovered Linkin Park. I
remember seeing the video for One Step Closer and thinking, holy fuck; I want
more of this in my life. I was in the kitchen at my dad’s house when I first
was introduced to them and the video for One Step Closer. It was on MTV 2 or
whatever channel Fuse used to be. It was mid day and I was just killing time in
the kitchen, eating and watching music videos. I sat on a stool in the kitchen,
and when the video came on, I became curious as fuck. The TV was this little
old white box, and as soon as the video started, I was hooked. The video opens
up with a bunch of would be punks walking down some random alley, where they
stumble upon Linkin Park, and then One Step Closer begins to play. The video
was not only sonically pleasing as fuck to my tween angst, but the ninjas,
early 00’s aesthetic, and just pure edge of the band was overwhelmingly
appealing to me. I had to fucking have whatever album this song was on. I was at target with my mom when I first saw
Hybrid Theory on the shelves; the album One Step Closer was on, and their only
album at the time. I tried to get my mom to buy it for me, but she took one
look at it and the title of the tracks on the back and decided it was too
inappropriate for a kid my age. I went to my dad’s house later that week and
obviously get him to buy it for me. Finally I had Linkin Park’s first album,
the one with One Step Closer on it. I remember sitting in the living room
downstairs at my dad’s house, sitting in front of the fireless fire place, CD
player in front of me and Linkin Park quietly playing through the speakers.
Papercut was the first track on the album. I remember listening to it and
thinking, holy fuck this is so dark. I felt like a bad kid just listening to something
so heavy and dark. A door opened up in my life, a door that had never existed
before that point in time. I had finally found a source of music that made me
feel a certain way. I was too young at the time to understand why the sound and
lyrics of Linkin Park sat so well with me, but from Papercut to Pushing Me
Away, I was a fucking fan of Linkin Park. It helped me process feelings I had
never realized I needed to process. I would spend a lot of time alone in my
room just endlessly listening to Hybrid Theory. I know all of the words to most
of Hybrid Theory. Linkin Park was the first band to strike a chord within my
angsty little kid self that would echo throughout the years to come. As I got
older, my love for them just grew. Meteora would come out a few years later,
and somehow was just as good as Hybrid Theory. Linkin Park is really basic
lyrically, both in rapping and normal vocals. There isn’t any deep sub-textual
meaning to their early stuff, but that was the appeal to me. Everything was so
easy for me to grasp as a kid, so easy for me to relate to as a kid, and
eventually as an adult. Meteora and Hybrid Theory are on my top ten albums of
all time. I discovered them as a tween/teen and fell in love instantly. It was
the perfect blend of catchy, but hard music, while still managing to be
relatable and digestible for someone as simple as me at the time. As I grew
older, I could see why people hated them for being “edgy”, but fuck that. They
helped me a lot as a kid. They said things that I didn’t know how to say as a
kid, and as an adult they helped me brush some dirt off my shoulder. I spent
the first few months here in Michigan running to the first like 6 tracks of
Meteora. Their music is simple, but that’s the best part of it. Anyone who’s
ever had any sort of mental issue can easily relate to their music. Learning
what I learned today about Chester’s life, I understand why Linkin Park was the
way it was in the beginning. He was molested and abused pretty heavily as a
kid, he was heavily addicted to drugs, and just had a really bad life for a
while, and the creative result of that was basically Hybrid Theory, Meteora,
and Minutes to Midnight. As he moved on from all the dark shit in his life,
Linkin Park “sold out” and became the unappealing poppy indie shit that it is
today. I don’t like their new stuff, its just not appealing to me in any way.
Their first three albums will always hold a special place in my heart, the
first two especially. Listening to them now, I can still relate very heavily,
as I’m currently in the midst of a crisis of being myself, and thus feel the
feels. What really hits hard about his suicide was the fact that like me, he
was molested, he struggled with substance abuse, and depression. Yet on top of
all that shit, he had millions of dollars, a wife, multiple kids, and a career
where he could be creative for a living, but that wasn’t enough. If he could
justify killing himself, when he had all that going for him, what keeps me
going? I share a few life struggles with him, and I’ve survived a suicide
attempt,. Why am I willing to live, despite not being a millionaire, husband,
father, musician, and a beloved figure, yet he wanted to die? I feel like I
said that in a confusing way. He had so much going for him that I don’t and he
still killed himself. Everything in life truly is relative. This man helped me
throughout my childhood unknowingly, and his music continues to do so, yet life
wasn’t enough for him. It truly does show you that everything in life is
relative, and you don’t know what those around you are going through. What I am
taking away from all of this is, love everyone, because you never know who
needs it. Some people hide their struggles; some people are at their ends wit
without you even being aware. When I tried to kill myself, I went to work that
day, I was acting pretty normal, and I just snapped. I walked out of work, and
quite literally went home and attempted suicide, pretty much out of nowhere. No
one can stop someone from doing this, not if they truly have their mind set on
it, but you can help prevent it. Listen to the people around you. Don’t listen
to respond, really listen to people.
Don’t be selfish, love thy neighbor, we’re all in this fucking shitty
ass world together. None of us know what the fuck is going on or what comes
next. I’m tired and not articulate enough as a writer to truly put into words
how much I love Linkin Park. Chester Bennington’s death is the first celebrity
death that I’ve cared about. I listen to music for lyrics, and then instruments
or beats. His lyrics hit home with me and being able to put meaning to the
source of them just add more attachment for me. I don’t think he could have
died in a worse way. Rest in peace dude, this is corny as fuck, but your music
meant a lot to me, and still does.
“To quote one of my favorite Linkin Park Songs
Relatable
What direction am I to take with my life after I return home? I think I’ll go back to my old job, see an old friend or two, but for the most part, I’ll lead an entirely different life. Will I go back to, and finally finish school? Will I work a 40 hour week and look for a full time job, and finally fucking move out of Mommies house? I’m not skilled in any in aspect of art. I’ve been told that I’m a good writer, I have an eye for pictures, and that I can edit a video quite well. All of those compliments have been nice, but all of my art has basically happened on accident for the most part, if I’m being honest. I have never put forth much effort into any one area in my life, other than running away. I’ve spent countless hours either sleeping, playing video games, watching movies, getting fucked up, and basically doing what I can to avoid living life. Living life just means fucking doing something. Learning a hobby, learning to fucking do something. Starting out sucking ass at whatever task it is at hand, and over time growing as a person, as I guess a hobbyist or whatever, and learning as you go. I think when I get home I will try my hand at living. I’m kind of trying my hand at it now. I’m drawing at least once a week, even if it is just these stupid little cubed robots I call Bum Bots. I write a blog post every now and then, sometimes I post ones I like better than others. Eventually when I stop being a fruitcake I’ll get around to teaching myself fruityloops, and ideally make some form of music, god only knows what the fuck I’d want to make my own music sound like. I thought that when I finally returned home, I was hoping to lock myself in my friend’s house, and force ourselves to brainstorm some sort of creative ideas for us to work together on. I found out recently that he may be going to live across the country before I even get home. That kind of sucks, I spent my years running away from living life with him, and missed tons of opportunities for us to work creatively together, and now it’s up to me to do shit on my own. I think that’s honestly for the best though. I need to learn to grow the fuck up and do things like a fucking adult. Start something, and see it through, bruises and scuffs all present. For now I’m making shitty photoshopped images on paint, drawing fucking robots, and writing weirdly personal blog posts. For now that may be enough. I’ll naturally grow from here, into new things and new avenues. Soon I’ll be making shitty music on top of all the other stupid shit I’m doing, and ideally after a few weeks, months, or years, I’ll get good at doing something I enjoy. When I get home from this Michigan pit of wellness, I’m going to revamp my old life with the vitality I’ve gained the past few months. I’m going to find a way to live a life I’m cool with, while still being able to grow as a person constantly. As long as I’m living life,(which for me is being creative in some way) and can support myself and live healthily, I think I’ll be fine with whatever happens after I get home. I don’t know the exact directions my life is going to go after I return home, but I know it will be a healthier one, and a more creative one.
BLOG 8
I
have a weird relationship with sleep. Have you ever had sleep paralysis? I
first had it in when I lived in the Dodworth apartments with my mom. I remember
being trapped on my stomach in my room, and someone in all black, face
included, was watching me in the doorway. I couldn’t move, I was asleep, but I
was somehow awake. I could see myself laying on the bed, face down, unable to
move. I could feel a presence behind me, I couldn’t see it, but somehow I knew
it was there, dressed in all black. I thought I was being robbed. I couldn’t
move. I remember paranoia drowning me, I remember struggling, thrashing wildly,
trying to break free. I couldn’t move. I was trapped on my stomach in my room
while someone watched me from the doorway. That was my first experience with
sleep paralysis. I eventually kind of
just woke up, and was like… whoa… what the fuck. Waking up from sleep paralysis
is like being forced into a bathtub and freezing cold water. It’s just like a
total system shock, and it takes your breath away. For a few moments following
waking up, you’re just taken aback; kind of blown away by what the fuck just
happened. I didn’t know what happened until it started happening a lot more
years later. I have a weird relationship with sleep.
I
started getting sleep paralysis all the time whenever I would sleep over my
girlfriends. I think it had something to do with my sleep apnea and pre-bed
throught process, I don’t know for sure. I would just kind of wake up and be
unable to move, but I was able to see a blurry reality around be. I would
always struggle to move, but as I struggled the world around me would sort IT
of stutter. There was almost always some sort of being present. I couldn’t
always see IT, but I could feel IT. IT felt like some sort of unknown figure
reaching out, feeling Its way up your arm, from wrist to elbow. IT was reaching
for something more than what my body had to offer. Whatever the fuck IT was, IT
always felt malicious. I was almost always afraid when I would wake up when I
was asleep. I would struggle in bed next to my girlfriend. I’d try shaking my
body, flailing my limbs to try and hit her, yelling as loud as I could, I just
needed her to wake me up whenever I was having sleep paralysis. I need to be
woken up. Something has to fucking save me. Something was always in the room
with me while I was asleep, and IT didn’t feel good. In the end, I never woke
her up. Though, in all my thrashing and
screaming, I would eventually wake myself up, gasping for air, happy that it
was over. I don’t think I’m articulate enough to describe the fear one feels
from the being present in sleep paralysis. I think the best thing I can
describe it as is IT. IT does not want to do anything good for you and IT does
nothing but make you feel as much fear as you can possibly feel, as your
trapped in a room paralyzed with IT. I’ve been able to break free from the
paralysis a few times, and turned it into a lucid dream probably three or four times. I can’t sustain lucid
dreams long at all, even when I slip right into one outside of paralysis. When
I break free from the paralysis and start lucid dreaming, IT has quite
literally come for me, more than once. One night in particular stands out to
me. I had just gotten out of the hospital, and was dreaming. I was having sleep
paralysis, and I was at home at my mom’s when it happened. I broke free from
the dream and thought I woke up as a result. I was afraid, IT scared the fuck
out of me, and I had a tendency to wake up from a dream in a dream. I know all
of this sounds really farfetched, but I have a weird relationship with sleep.
Anyway, I woke up from sleep paralysis into a dream, and I woke up from that
dream into another dream, and this happened like three times, and finally I
thought I woke up for good, and was like HOLY FUCK, I NEED TO KNOW WHATS REAL.
So I got up out of bed, walked towards my mom’s room, and started banging on
the door, crying, begging for help. I needed her to confirm I was awake, that
this was real life, right here, right now. She opened the door and started
belittling me. She was saying I was making everything up, and that I just
needed to go back to bed. I remembered hearing all that and thought to myself,
something doesn’t make sense. While my mom was talking to my I started to look
at the world around me. Everything was suddenly much brighter than it should’ve
been .The world started to stutter and melt around me, I woke up gasping for
air. I was still fucking dreaming. I had to fucking talk to someone in real
life. I needed to know what was real at this point. I had gone through like
four layers of bullshit dreaming, and I was scared. I got out of bed and walked
into the hallway to go to my mom’s room again. The hallway was dark, and the
only light was coming from my CPAP; a little blue light behind me in my room. I
got maybe halfway to my mom’s room, when all of a sudden; something from the
darkness behind me grabbed me by both legs and dragged me backwards into the
darkness of my room. IT dragged me towards the little blue light of my CPAP. IT
said something to me, but I can’t remember anymore. Mind you I was lucid
dreaming this entire time. I was awake and alert, and I fucking lived that
shit. I have never been more scare din my entire god damn life. I finally woke
up, and fuck getting out of bed at that point, I fucking called my mom on the
phone and made her come into my room. She came into my room and talked to me
for a little bit. I was done dreaming, and after like thirty minutes of talking
my mom had calmed me down. I don’t have sleep paralysis anymore. I don’t know
why it’s gone away, but after I stopped fantasizing about some dark shit before
bed, it kind of just disappeared. I do however have really elaborate big budget
dreams, weird small scale dreams, I have
lots of dreams.
I
have a weird relationship with sleep. Right now it’s the dictating factor on
whether or not I have a good day. I have no conscious control over the amount
of real sleep I get sometimes. For the most part I’m in bed every night before
twelve, and I wake up around eight or nine every day. I almost always get
between nine and ten hours of sleep a day, but that’s not the issue. I can
knock myself out for eight, nine, or ten hours a night, and still not get
enough sleep. I have sleep apnea, so even when I’m sleeping, I’m not always
sleeping. Instead of sleeping, I’m constantly waking myself up multiple times a
minute, but I’m almost never aware of this. Every now and then I wake up a few
times throughout the night, but I just assume that’s normal. I never stop to
think that anything deeper is wrong. For the past like month and a half, I’ve
been depressed as fuck. I had my meds increased, I’ve been in therapy, I’ve
being doing DBT, and I’ve been doing everything that should equate to some
semblance of feeling content. Everything was going right on the surface, but
something wasn’t right beneath it. I just wasn’t sleeping at night. I have
severe sleep apnea, and every night when I’m ready to go to sleep, I have to
strap myself into a fucking mask connected to a machine. I seriously look like
a less masculine version of Bane, the Batman villain. The mask feeds air into
my mouth/nose while I sleep so that when I snore (struggle to breath) air gets
forced down my throat to open the passage so I can breath, because when you
stop breathing in your sleep, your brain wakes you up. My apneas are severe, so
I wake up multiple times a minute at the peak of my, I don’t know, apneas? I
don’t know much about it to be honest, but I know I have a severe case, and
that when I got tested, the longest I went without breathing in my sleep was
about a minute and some change; shits scary to know that you can go a minute of
not breathing in your sleep and not even know about it. I almost never know
when I have issues when I’m sleeping. Like I said, sometimes I wake up at
night, but I usually chalk that up to too much coffee or something. I have a
weird relationship with sleep. My CPAP has been fucked up lately. It’s been off
its rocker the past month and a half, and I don’t think I’ve been getting good
sleep at night, and as a result I’ve been having a shitty fucking time. I’m
going to go to sleep tonight and hope that my CPAP does its job, and that I
wake up tomorrow feeling rested. I think my tinkering with it two days ago,
fixed whatever has been wrong the past few months, but I’m worried it won’t
work. I go to sleep not knowing if I’ll wake up feeling good or bad. My day
tomorrow is going to be dictating by events that go on tonight that I literally
have no control over. All I can do is wait until I see the doctor and have my
machine adjusted. The past two days have been wonderful. I’ve tinkered with the
settings, and I’ve had two days of just happiness, and I’m almost certain it’s
because I fixed the machine. I still have this shadow of doubt, that somehow it
could all go wrong throughout the night. I go to bed tonight with only the best
in mind. Sleep is the final piece in this stupid ass puzzle of my happiness, or
at least some form of sustainable contentment.
I have a weird relationship with sleep. It is my savior, and
my downfall. I have spent months in bed depressed, waiting for my life to end
at any moment. Going to bed each night, hoping that this will be the last time
I have to go to bed. That this will be the last time I put the god damn CPAP
on. I have spent time hating the idea of sleep, manically desperate for some
activity to keep my awake. Sleep is everything and nothing, and in the end it’s
all about moderation. I look forward to sleep tonight. I look forward to
whatever adventure it takes me on for the eight to nine hours of time I give
it. I hope that I don’t have too many apneas, and that tomorrow brings another
good day, and that my weird relationship with sleep comes to a close. This post
only scratches the surface of the type of shit I’ve dealt with over sleep. I
have a weird relationship with sleep
BLOG 9
where am i
I want to hang myself naked upside down. I’ll hang by
each one of my toes. Hooks in each toes from descending order by size, big ones
first. I’ll surely slide out of the hooks and on onto the floor because I'm too
heavy to hold my weight on such small hooks. When my body hits the floor, I'll
curl up into a ball, but only for a second. After that second, I'll get up.
I'll get up and start yelling. I'll yell until my voice goes a mile past
hoarse. I'll yell until my throat starts to bleed, and the blood starts to
gurgle as I continue yelling. I want the blood to fill my throat as I yell. I
won't let any of it out. I'll hold it all in. A throat full of vibrations and
blood, just pulsing. I want my face to burst like a cherry. Throat still
vibrating, blood still pulsing, I want to explode. My head will explode.
My eyes will burst out of my skulls first. They'll hit the walls, bouncing off
and landing on the floor next to my destroyed toes. My teeth will pop out next.
Each one popping like a kernel; bouncing off the room like unloaded bullets lit
on fire. My nose will pelt forward, straight into the wall, where it slowly
falls down; soaking in the scent of wet concrete. My ears will burst
horizontally from my skull, smashing into a door and a shelf. I can't hear
anything over the echoes of my gurgled yelling. After each of my my features
bursts off my being, only then will my entire face stop echoing yells, and
totally erupt. What's left of my face will cave in on itself, sending blood
upward; like that scene in The Nightmare on Elm Street with Johnny Depp. It’ll
rain down on my limp body because instead of letting shit out, I held it in for
a little bit too long. My fucking head will fucking explode and my toes will be
ripped to shreds.
where am I?
is my state manic?
is my state depressed?
is my state leveled?
is my state unhinged?
am i in the state of maryland?
am i in the state of michigan?
what state am i in?
if i could get in a car and drive for hours i would
*tunes radio to 11.1.93*
i break mirrors with my face in the united states
*tunes to 1.11.93l*
I'M SCREAMING AT A ALL
RED, I'M SEEING RED
*tunes to 93.11.1*
SPIT IT OUT
*turns off the radio and uses tor browser on an android*
FEAR OVER PRIDE lil boy
FLOOD YOU CAN'T HIDE lil boy
FACE OF A WOMEN lil boy
TEARS OF A CHILD lil boy
burn thru it burn thru it
*puts the phone down and turns the radio back to 1.11.93*
"you must've been out your head"
where am i?
If every house were made of matchsticks, and every car a
matchbox racer, I'd burn them all. I’d watch the plastic melt into one
indistinguishable mold. I’d look closely at the matchstick houses burning
slowly. Watching each ember eat away at the home it resided in..Happiness is
the last thing I'll see today. Content is a distant friend of indifference. I'm
not content anymore.
i'm not indifferent.
i'm displeased.
dissatisfied .
disappointed
dispirited
desolate
dysphoric.
i don't want to be here
i want to be there
where you are
that state
your state
not my state
this state is not mine
where am i?
Why am I so desperate to get back to a life that I tried to kill myself to escape from? Does that make sense?
I’ve been picking, my
scabs again.
For the past 24
hours, I’ve been constantly feeling my eyes rolling into the back of my head.
Like a bad wave is washing over me, ripping my head back with it.
Yesterday I wrote a post on here that mimicked my writing
when I was manic. I literally turned my feelings of dysphoria into a gory
little paragraph. It was meant to be a visual representation of how it feels to
hold everything inside until it boils over; until it pushes you to your limits.
I think my grammar is really subpar sometimes.
I just had a really bad time yesterday. I was really alone, angry, and
sad. I have been living life in a very exemplary fashion. I eat a balanced
diet, exercise daily, practice creativity, cook, work on relationships,
participate in groups, take my meds, I just do everything I’m supposed to be
doing to be “happy”. For whatever reason though, that wasn’t enough yesterday,
or today.
Last night, after a shitty AA meeting, and a long, brooding
drive home, I was just fed up. I wrote a weirdly depressed post on here, and
then proceed to have one of the darkest pre sleep thought processes ever. I
haven’t had to deal with suicidal ideation for a few months. Last night was
different. In about a matter of, maybe four minutes, I had formulated an almost
full proof suicide plan here at Rosehill.
I would use my
dresser or chair in my room as a means to lock myself in my room from the
inside; to barricade myself in. With my door unable to be opened for at least
ten minutes, I’d break open my window with a T-shirt, and I’d cut open an
artery with a shard, and bleed out. I’d probably go for the carotid arteries,
something juicy. I was almost certain that if I did it late enough in the
night, when staff was least expecting it, when staff was at its weakest; I’d
succeed. They’d have to break the door down by brute force, move the dresser
out of the way, and bandage me up; all before I bleed out.
As I lay there in bed, trying to fall asleep, this idea came
to me. It did indeed take about four, maybe less, minutes to devise this plan.
I then fantasized about the idea until I fell asleep. I use suicidal ideation
as a comfort sometimes. It’s like an old friend. One I don’t see often, but he
always has a solution to any problem I have. He’s an easy fix to any
predicament I may find myself in. He gives me intricate thought, and elaborate
but twisted fantasies. I was plagued before bed last night by my old friend,
but also comforted.
Today when I woke up,
I was just sad. I went about my day as if everything was fine. I acted as if
everything was okay. I went to my volunteer site and worked for two-ish hours.
We followed trails in the woods, cutting down any foliage we saw blocking the
trails. It was boring, and gave me time to brood on the thoughts of the night
prior. Thoughts I didn’t want to have, but couldn’t help but indulge in. I got
back from the site and proceeded to physically exercise, go to yoga, then to
process group. In group I shared everything. I told everyone about how lonely I
was, how I spent the night thinking of elaborate ways to kill myself. How I was
so alone.
Did I mention how alone I felt out here in Michigan, no real
friends or family in sight, trapped in a house full of mentally ill addicts.
Yeah, I’m surrounded by people constantly, but I’ve never been so alone and
alienated from everyone I’ve ever known in my life. If you’re reading this, we
probably don’t talk, and if we do, it’s what, maybe once or twice every few
weeks? I’m fucking lonely.
Anyways I had to
leave process group twice. The first time was because I was going to cry. The
second time was because I was crying. I cried for the first time at Rosehill
today. I sat on the front porch smoking a black Marlboro menthol 100 listening
to BROCHAMPTON’s song Lamb, and cried.
“This ol sky
if I die
I hope I’m no random guy
someone out there they will say
he is mine, he is mine”
BROCKHAMPTON – Lamb
I was just so alone. I realized, like really realized, that
no matter what I do sometimes I’ll just be fucking sad. I’m bipolar, and I
think that’s just a reality of my life that I’ll have to face, that some days,
I’ll just be sad and upset for no real reason
. I’ve been living my life as best I can, but sometimes
that’s not enough, and I think that’s going to be okay. When I feel down, when
I feel up, when I feel any type of way,the best way for me to constantly live
my life, is as if I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt. To live as if I’m
constantly a work in progress and as if nothing is wrong with me.
“Act as if” has been my mantra for the day
Act as if nothing is wrong. Act as if every day is meant to
be lived to the fullest, as if every moment you get, is the last, and best
moment ever, despite how fucking terrible it may feel.
Carpe Diem
fuck it
Carpe Noctem
I HAD A BAD WENESDAY AHHHHHGAIN. LIKE THIRD WEEK IN A ROW. SAME WENSEDAY, SAME STATE, DIFFERENT STATE, BUT SAME STATE; I KNOW WHERE I AM THIS TIME THOUGH. I TRIED TO GET A SPONSOR TONIGHt, BUT I REALIZED IT’S NOT A PASSIVE PROCESS, ITS ACTIVE AS FUCK, THE WHOLE PROGRAM IS. THAT’S NOT WHY TODAY SUCKS. TODAY SUCKS BECAUSE I LIVE IN A HOUSE FULL OF MENTALLY ILL DRUG ADDICTS, AND THEY FEED OFF OF EACH OTHER. ONE CATCHES A BAD WAVE, AND THE OTHERS PICK UP BOOGIE BOARDS AND RIDE IT INTO SHORE, WHERE I SIT, NOT DROWNING IN MY WOES. IT’S FUCKING AWESOME.
Can’t you tell? I hate all caps, but typing in them is kind
of soothing.
I was cooking dinner
tonight, and two of my housemates came in. They started surfing each other’s
bad wave. Riding each other’s sadness into shore, unknowingly dragging me
inward; two people stuck in the tar pit of their ways, (thnx earl) dragging a
third in. I stood there and listened for ten minutes or so. Wanting to fucking
yell at them, to explain that healing is an active process, That’s it’s not
easy, it’s not fucking instant, its fucking long, and generally miserable at
first; especially if you’ve spent years, or decades making yourself sad. They
talked about how nothing works for them, how they’ve been fucked up for so
long, how nothing ever works, and comparing metaphorically sad mental dicks.
After a while I was just annoyed and said “Do you guys ever consider not
indulging in your illness?” one housemate responded with “Well, it’s my job”,
the other said “I don’t”. Both responses told me everything I needed to know
about their situations. I bit my tongue, and when they looked to me for a response,
I was lost for words, overwhelmed by their responses. I sat in silence for more
than a few moments while they looked at me, waiting, expecting a response. I
asked one of them to watch the food, and I rushed out to smoke a cigarette. I
was angry as fuck. It came out of nowhere, I realized what’s been causing my
bad moods lately, what’s been drowning me in a bad wave. I was ready to smash
chairs and break windows. I could feel my eyes rolling back into my head, my
arms tensing up, and shoulders lifting weight that didn’t exist. They were
indulging in their illnesses, riffing on how sad they were, how nothing had
helped them, and how nothing seemingly ever would. I just sat there, watching,
thinking to myself, how the fuck did I get where I am now; if I was where they
were three months ago? Was age the only defining factor in my healing
progression? Had I not had enough time in the tar pit of my ways, to get truly
stuck in it? Was my life not as bad as theirs? Was I just more willing than
them to change? Was I less willful? All I can say is that I submitted. I
submitted to a better version of myself. AA and NA is all about this higher
power shit, and my higher power is an unattainable version of myself that I am
constantly working towards, “praying” to and looking for guidance from. I
submitted myself to a better version of myself; I submitted to the program I’m
in, to a chance that I can heal. I stopped letting myself and my sadness get in
my god damn way, and all of a sudden, nothing was stopping me from healing.
Clearing the road in front of me, submitting to healing, and being willing
fucking worked. No longer do I sit with my housemates and indulge in their
negative ways, and riff with their hatred, both self and other. If I find
myself doing just that, it’s because it’s a tool of social interaction, not out
of self loathing. Whatever the fuck I did to get where I’m out now, I wanted to
share with them tonight. To explain to them that, there is hope, that not all
is lost, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t share anything with them. I was too afraid
to tell them how I’m feeling, to be open and honest, to express myself in
person, and be honest with someone I care for that isn’t very close to me. For
whatever reason, I got angry instead.
What I wanted to say to them was, yes, you’re old, and yes
you’re angry, but life doesn’t end there. Eventually you’ll change; it’s just a
fact of life. You can wait around all fucking day to have some omnipotent being
come down and wash away your sorrows and grant you eternal success, but I can
guarantee you that will never happen. What you can do is pick yourself up and
start working. Some people have more work than others. Some of you have lived
my life twice over, living a life time of mine drenched in sadness, truly stuck
in the tar pit of your ways. You may
have a longer journey than me, but somehow it is all relative. Somehow you too
can get better; somehow it is just as possible for you to heal, as it is for me.
I know this sounds fucking stupid, and I hope, and I don’t hope that you read
this, but I just want to help you. You ruined my night, and fucking made me
angry, but only because I realized nothing I can do or say will help you. You
have to truly want to help yourself; you have to want to fight all god damn day
and night. You have to fake it for weeks, months, however long, until you feel
it, until it sticks, and even then you can’t stop, you can never stop. You
didn’t get this way in a few days, weeks, months, or even years, it took
decades to get where you are, and it will take some god damn effort to get out.
You just may not be ready to help yourself yet, and there’s nothing I can do or
say to make it so. So here I am, writing this, hoping that you’ll see this, and
hear the things I want to say to you, but can’t in person. Put in work man,
I’ll continue to help you ask I can. Both of you, one is old and bitter, the
other is young and salty, both still older than me. This shit takes time and
effort, and everything worthwhile in life is fucking difficult. One of you said
to me tonight “I don’t like anything that takes effort”, why the fuck, please
help yourself. I will do anything I can to help you, but first, you must help
yourself, become willing, submit to the hope of a better tomorrow. Stop fucking
ruining my good days because you idiots can’t stop talking about how miserable
you are, stop bitching about shit and fucking do something. You’re here for a
reason; make use of your time, because time is constantly running out. I love
both of you, but you guys drive me insane sometimes. Tonight is the perfect
example of that.
I just had a bad night because I can’t help everyone, and
sometimes I can’t help but let other affect me. Bad energy is contagious and
I’ve gotten sick for two weeks in a row. I’ve got to learn to deal with it. I
live in a house full of mentally ill drug addicts; bad vibes a plenty pollute
the air. I just had a bad night.
I knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who had
a tattoo that said “fuck good vibes.” I used to think that shit was dope as
fuck. I even took an old dream catcher I had, ripped out its guts and restrung
it with a pink pentagram. It sucked out the good vibes of my dreams, because,
“fuck good vibes” right? That shit isn’t cool. You can’t do much with bad vibes
if you’re mentally ill. You ride them out to dark places. You make friends with
them, hangout in dark alleys, talk about fucked up shit you want to do
together, bad vibey type shit. Bad vibes aren’t cool. I fucked up my dreams for
a while in my opinion with that dreamcatcher. For the longest time, I didn’t
dream. I’d just have varying degrees of nightmares and tons of sleep paralysis.
Saying fuck good vibes, I ran my life into the ground. I attempted and failed
at suicide, I spent a year just waiting, waiting to kill myself. The good news
is that since I’ve been coasting on these good vibes, I’ve been pleasantly
creative, happy, dreaming, and doing generally nice things in life. It’s just
more fun. I think that’s why this bad energy in the house fucks with me so
much. Fuck bad vibes. No one should ride those waves, they get you nowhere.
Tonight’s the kind of night that going for a drive would
help. Cruise around and listen to music. Vibe out.
I don’t have a car, so this will suffice
*gets in fake car*
*Track 2*
*Track 3*
*Track 4*
*Track 5*
*Track 6*
*Track 7*
If your foot is caught in the quick sand of your ways, work on pulling it out.
My eyes roll back into my skull
Trying to tunnel down into my mouth
Where they make attempt to burrow out from in between my
teeth
Escaping the things they'll one day see
My ears fold inwards
rolling up like carpets
sliding down the shaft that connects them to the innards of
my head
They too run in fear of things not yet overheard.
My mouth will grows wider
and wider
until it beaks itself in half
working as hard as it can
to never speak the horrible things it will eventually
speak
I'll see, hear, and say horrible things
Eventually
Thicc
One day soon I'll be able to see my penis when I look down
For now the view highlights
My gut
Witheld
As my head implodes
Bursting from internal overload
Thoughts and memories
Will fly
Leaving behind
A thicc boy with a shattered skull
And no mind to hide behind
Just once
If I keep writing
Day in
Day out
Will something click?
Will I find a means to an end
A road never twisting or turning
I could write a line about blah blah blah
Yerning
But in the end
This shit is still forced, contrived
Underdeveloped
Rushed
it's still shit
Where am I?
I'm not in the state of Maryland
I'm in the state of Michigan
I'm not in a state of depression
I'm not in a state of mania
Where am i
Where will I be in two months
What state will I be in
I'll be in Maryland
Ideally
But
What state will I be in
Our Father
In meetings
At the end
We say the serenity prayer
We gather round
Lock hands
pray
Each time
I find myself
Holding on
Tighter
&
Tighter
To each person
By my side
I'm alone here
But never there
Dr. Fisherman & Thom Trout
I was molested
As a kid
He was my psychiatrist
He convinced me to
Lay on a couch
&
Strip
I did
He touched
Me
Did I get hard?
I don't remember
Would it matter?
Does that event matter
At all?
Does the past
Dictate
The present?
No
I wasn't molested
Until
I had to talk about it
To
Lawyer's
Police
My family
I was just a kid
Until I had to talk about it
I was just a kid
My life changed forever
Because
It became a reality
Holly peach
I knew a girl
Banana blonde tips
Hiding behind her palms
Dimples covered in shadows
Orange peels lining her teeth
Her name was hallelujah peach
She was sixteen
Mysteriously young
See Lux Lisbon
Words slurred sober
My name was written on her underwear
My finger wrapped around her lace
My guide through a city
My guide down an unexpected road
This banana tipped blond
A dream girl
But
Dreams fade
&
Reality returns
Tonight’s the kind of night that going for a drive would
help. Cruise around and listen to music.
Vibe out.
I don’t have a car,
so this will suffice.
*gets in fake car*
*puts cd in fake car stereo*
*Track 1*
(Wolf)
Odd (I'm not yet a man)
Future (Still not of a boy)
Wolf (This my only joy)
Gang (Now let's parade in gold)
*Track 2*
(Wulf)
I'm pushin pedals in the dark
I'm ridin fast real far, yeah
I don't know, where to even go but I'm still goin there
Gas on E but that don’t matter I’m still rollin’ man
*Track 3*
(TF)
Spent my life
Trying to make everything right
Hypernight
Widened sight to make me realize
*Track 4*
(RK)
At large COMIC, at large COMIC
COMIC falls, COMIC's dead, COMIC
COMIC, COMIC's alive
Why can’t I cry $$$
Instead of tears
Roll around in brand new gear
Hella ammo, no more fear
*Track 6*
(JM)
And at the driving range
You shouted fire away
I started feeling strange
Thought of taking my life
And then I told you so
I fucking told you soooo
*Track 7*
*Sound starts cracking*
But blue I need
*Sound splits into a skipping noise*
to rest
(Krule)
*CD starts skipping, songs become unplayable past this point*
I’m so lonely.
I live in a house full of people, constant staff, but I’m so lonely. My term in this state is slowly coming to an end. I go home for a week or so in two days. When I come back, I’ll have a month and some change left on my bid. My mom wants me to do some transitional living stuff, but I just want to come home. My life in MD wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was still my life. I’m worried that I changed too much. I’m worried that I haven’t changed enough. I’m worried about the future. My life ends and begins in mid October. I’m so alone here. I’m barely speaking to one of my housemates. I shared some shit in a process group that offended them. That was not my intention. I just wanted to kind of kill the bad vibes and shit in the house. I noticed we were feeding off of each other’s issues and I wanted that to end. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I wish I hadn’t said it. I’m so fucking alone. Everything else about my life is amazing. I’m content as fuck, I’m cooking, cleaning, exercising, being creative, volunteering; I’m doing everything right, but I’m still lonely. That’s my biggest hang up right now. A house full of people 24/7 and I’m alone. I just want October to be here. I want to go home, to start my life again, and be with my girlfriend, my family, my friends, and my world. I’ve learned a lot here. I’ve learned what kind of relationship I want from a therapist, DBT skills, mindfulness, routine, structure, basic life skills. I’ve learned and grown so much in the past 4ish months. Now I’m just waiting. Waiting for life to end and begin again, to start anew. I think I’m just in a totally different place than my housemates. Different place, and just generally a different type of person, but it’s funny because we are all so similar. I don’t know when I changed, or how I got here, but I’m gucci as fuck right now. I’m just lonely, and I don’t think that will change for some time. It’s almost over. Home stretch. I’m doing more work now than I ever have before. I’m sprinting for home, counting every second as it passes. It will end soon. Soon I will be back, but for now, I’m lonely
I have a weird relationship with sleep. I don’t know if you know me, but if you’re reading this I’m going to assume you do. I’m a weird dude. I’m just kind of out there sometimes. I do my own thing a lot, I’m just fucking weird. This is all going to sound like bullshit. I know very few people, almost no one in person, who has gone through these weird sleep gymnastics I go through. It sounds ridiculous and absurd, and just unreal, but I assure you, I’m not making this up. I’m just a really really active dreamer. I have crazy grandiose dreams that are either big budget extravaganzas, or intimatly woven stories about a life I will never lead. I’ve had horrifying nightmares where I wake up from one nightmare into another, into another, and into another. An endless loop of waking up from a nightmare into more and more nightmares; each time plagued by some sort of negative energy present from within me. I have been through some terrifying sleep paralysis nightmares. Paralyzed in a waken state, watching my surroundings, screaming, thrashing, begging to wake up, to free myself. As I’ve thrashed and cried out, something dark from within me is always present with me, watching me. I have had lucid dreams where I can fly. I force all my bodily energy upwards, and my body takes off. I soar through the air, until I start to question how I’m flying. Then I fall, waking up when I hit the ground.
I have a fucking
terrifying relationship with sleep.
I haven’t had sleep
paralysis or endless loops of dreams since I’ve been in Michigan. I thought I
was having really boring lucid dreams since I’ve been here, but that wasn’t the
case. After yesterday I was kind of pissed off that I’ve been having the same
lucid dream over and over, never fully being able to control anything. So I
asked some questions and did some research. This is when I stumbled into this
astral projection shit. I realized I’m astral projecting, not lucid dreaming.
That sounds fucking weird, but it’s what’s been happening. I’m not going to be
possessed, I’m not going to get lost in the dream world; nothing detrimental is
going to come of it. I’m just going to end up becoming more of an active
dreamer than I ever was. Apparently astral projection isn’t just some bullshit
plot device used in the movie Insidious to scare the shit out of you. It’s
apparently a state of dreaming that’s new to me. To keep it short and sweet,
it’s basically an out of body experience, but while you’re asleep. It’s a lucid
dream state that you can’t fully control. You can’t fly, you can’t make shit
appear, and you can’t do whatever you want in the dream. You have very limited
control of this dream state. You can walk around what is called the “astral
plane”, whatever the fuck that is, but you can’t truly control it. It always
starts with a series of tingles or vibrations all over your body. I always have
the choice to indulge the feelings, or push them away, but I always go with the
flow. I follow the sensations, and after the three pulsing vibrations, I wake
up, but I’m asleep. I awaken within a dream world, a lucid dream state of
sorts. I don’t really know much about it, but I’ve gotten a good bit of
feedback about it, and done enough research to know that this dream state is
not a lucid dream per say, but is instead an “astral projection”. When this
happens to me, I wake up; I get out of bed, and kind of just stumble around. I
can’t always see. This is called “astral blindness”. Things have been clear a
few times, but recently things are generally dark, and I can’t see for shit. I
can get the general idea of what’s where in the dream because the world around
me is exactly like the room I sleep in. I don’t wake up in some random dream
world because I wake up in what is basically the house I live in. That’s how I
know this isn’t a lucid dream. It’s happened probably ten times since I’ve been
in Michigan. It’s always in Baker house, it’s always me getting up out of my
bed, stumbling to my door, either opening my door, or waking up. If I make it
out the door, which I’ve only done three times, the house is always different.
My room is the only general house concept that is static in the dream state.
I’m always in my room, door closed, in my bed under the covers. I always wake
up into it the same way. Get up from the bed, let the sheets fall off of me,
stumble to the door, sometimes fall on the floor, I don’t really have much
control in this state yet. It kind of feels like I’m drunk, never standing up
straight, never having full control over my motor functions, but always being
vaguely conscious that I’m awake within a dream. I have no idea what I’ve been
doing to cause it, but it keeps happening randomly. I always allow it to
happen. Now that I’m aware of what’s happening I’m going to try a few things,
but first I want to address something. I’ve felt a very negative presence
within these astral projections more than once. The presence is very similar to
the feeling one gets from sleep paralysis. The negative presence I’ve felt
within this state has been emotions from within me. There is no ghost in my
house, no demon in my bedroom, no supernatural phenomenon at play here. The
only demons and ghosts I know of are the ones I keep locked deep within me. The
types of things I’d stumble upon while deep within myself. I can only imagine
that “astral projection” is just a sort of in depth exploration of self. I
don’t want to do a ton of research on it because, it’s a fucking dream. There
is no real solid science to this stuff, it’s too abstract. I know that if I
feel a negative presence in any dream state that it is simply some negative
feeling I harbor within myself. That’s all it’s ever been. The thing I’ve felt
during sleep paralysis was just my negative energy, the same applies to this
feeling or presence I feel during an lucid dream state, nothing more, nothing
less. If anyone is reading this, I apologize. This is trailing off into
something weirder than I ever imagined, but I want to continue. This is an
avenue that I feel I need to explore through writing. I want to process all of
this because if it happens again, I want to be prepared. You can’t imagine what
it feels like to be in a lucid dream state and feel something there with you.
Now that I know I’ve been doing this astral projection shit I want to prepare
myself for when it happens again. Yesterday when it happened, something really
dark poked me awake. I’ve seen a little kid curled up in a ball by my doorway
once, I opened my eyes to look at him, and he came at me. That was singlehandedly
the scariest experience I’ve had here in Michigan, and it was during an “astral
projection”. I realize I keep randomly putting it in quotes, that’s because I
can’t believe I actually believe this is really a thing. I SOUND RIDICULOUS. Now that I’ve gotten that out, back to what I
was saying. These maleficent presences I’ve felt across a variety of dream
states are nothing but projections of me, my dark feelings. I think I’ve been
feeling them constantly within my dreams, at random intervals, because I need
to address them. I don’t know what they are, or how to address them, but I
think there’s a reason I’ve only had one type of lucid dream state while in
Michigan. I’ve literally had the most explorative dream state there is, astral
projection. I naturally have had regular dreams here too, but I’ve never
“astral projected” anywhere else but here in Michigan. I think it’s because
while I’m here, I’m doing a lot of emotional work. I think I’m supposed to work
on exploring this dream state, addresses the demons, the dark harbored emotions
I meet in my dreams. This shit sounds so fucking ridiculous, but I think its
happening for a reason, and it’s fucking terrifying. Maybe I don’t have to
confront this shit within a dream state, but it’s a sign that maybe I need to
address something within my waking state, I have no idea, but something within
me has to be addressed, and its literally coming at me in my sleep, scaring the
fuck out of me in the process. So if it happens again while I sleep, the next
time I astral project, I’m going to stand my ground. I’m going to focus on
control. I’m going to focus on my body, my muscles, my self control, work on me
being before anything else. Self control is above all else, in dream state or
waking state, self control is the key. Once I have self control, everything
else will fall into place. If anyone is reading this, I’m sorry for this being
so out there, but this helped me a lot. I am also now terrified to go asleep,
but I will. I will confront my demons, both during wake and during sleep. I
will work on self control. I will watch as things fall into place, as I gain
self control.
Today I had an hour long conversation with a staff member here at Rose Hill. It started out just as us talking about music; a lot of rap and R&B came out yesterday. Wiki, Lil Uzi Vert, XXXtentacion, Action Bronson, Daniel Ceaser, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Miguel, ASAP Mob, and probably a few more, all released music yesterday. We probably talked for an hour about music.
We generally talk about rap, but today we landed on
something different. After getting on the subject of Michael Jackson, we
stumbled on to topic of trauma. At the ripe age of 8 or 9, MJ was singing about
passionate love and romance. These are concepts and events that a child doesn’t
understand. Writing and singing songs about love and romance; making albums
dedicated to these themes is most likely traumatizing to a child. From there we
got onto the subject of general life trauma. He proceeded to tell me that
trauma can stunt growth until it is addressed. Michael Jackson never had his
trauma truly addressed. He actually probably just had various forms of trauma
pile on top of him until he became the man he we know today. You can see the
effects of his struggles in the person he became. Further into this tangent of
the discussion, I began to apply this idea of trauma to my life and others. I
looked at events of my life, traumatic events, and dealings that after they
happened, I became to stagnate, stuck in a specific state. Where was I for so
much of my life? I was a late bloomer at a variety of ages. Divorce is
traumatizing for kids. Bullying is traumatizing. Sexual abuse is traumatizing.
Mental illness is traumatizing. I’m only applying this to myself, but trauma is
relative. Everything is relative. Racism is traumatizing. So much of what the
average person experiences is traumatizing. We are a race of generally stunted
people because we are dealing with events in our lives that we are either ill
equipped to deal with, or too immature. Not everyone struggles with these
problems as much as the next, and not everyone has the same degree of trauma as
others, but we all suffer from it. We all struggle in a relatively similar
manner, a manner in which we are generally unaware of; a deep seeded struggle
from within. The root of the problem is called “the root” because its buried
deep within. You really need to be introspective and look within yourself,
within the negative events in your life, and really indentify what went wrong
where and why. It’s different for everyone, and no two people are the same,
despite having similar issues. These problems aren’t a lifelong sentence, but
for many, they seem that way. No matter your gender, race, illness,
nationality, background, and everything else, events of your life shape the
person you become. Everything about you plays into who you are, and what you
are allowing yourself to become, whether you admit that or not, it is entirely
up to you. I may be stepping into deep water here, but it is of my belief that
we are the sum of our pasts, but only until we make the decision to be a result
of the present and the ideal future self we wish to be.
This is the part where I stop talking about the general gist
of trauma and life, and start talking about myself.
I was always a late
bloomer. I’ve always had problems growing, and when I struggled with it, I
really struggled with it. But when I was growing, I grew at exponential speeds,
but not always in the right direction. I struggled as a toddler. I was in
therapy by the age of three. My parents were divorced and constantly fighting
when I was young. That was traumatizing. I then went on to constantly struggle
in school. To never truly give a shit about it; to stagnate in what would
otherwise be a vital period of growth. As a child, without any outside help, I
was not equipped to deal with a divorce or anxiety. I internalized them and
they manifested into what I became as a kid. I developed a lot of social
anxiety, troubles in school, and the inability to really grow at an early age.
Before I had a chance to come into my own, another event happened. Drowning out
the previous struggles, muffling their problems and adding to their strength; I
was molested by a psychiatrist. I went from a long rippling event into an even
larger splash in the pond of my life. I struggled even more. I had a year where
I blocked it all at, but it came back stronger than ever by the time I reached
high school. I became depressed, anxious, isolated, alone, scared, slow, and
stuck. No one came to my rescue to help me deal with it. A teenager, or a
child, or a boy, is not equipped to deal with sexual abuse, I definitely
wasn’t. Before anyone came to my help, they made it worse. I had to relive my
trauma, I had to stop it from happening to others. I had to go to the
authorities and stop the doctor who hurt me from hurting others. I talked to my
family, police, lawyers, therapists, all in an attempt to help others, but
never myself. It did nothing for me but made things worse. I went from having a
weird event in my childhood, to becoming a victim of child molestation in what
felt like an instant. I began developing the core belief that I was a victim. I
still hadn’t dealt with the trauma of divorce, or bullying and their ripple
effects. Instead, I had more traumas to add onto my pile of shit. I began to
act out, to get high, but never to a real life ruining degree. I experimented
with a lot of drugs, I’d skip class, sleep all day, drink too much, lash out at
others. I would say awful things to good people. I began to hurt those around
me because I couldn’t help myself. I thought I was above everyone else because
I thought no one else knew my pain. How could they? Surely if they did, they
would help. I wanted to hurt and torment those around me because I wanted to
know how they’d react. How they would handle trauma. Like I said, trauma comes
in many forms. Bullying is a type of trauma, depression, anxiety, suicidal
ideation, homophobia, sexism, racism, self harm, all traumas. I was hurting
others because I was hurting. No longer was I internalizing my problems, I was
expressing them. They were coming out in the most toxic form possible. I was a
blight on many people’s lives, but many people I know wouldn’t think so.
Suffering was normalized. My actions weren’t registered by others for the
severity that they were. People would just say I was weird, funny, just Justin.
I stopped stagnating as a result of my trauma and began to grow from it. It
manifested in negativity, in a way that would ruin my life for years to come. I
began to subject myself to the most toxic things I could find. Online I would
watch the most fucked up viral media I could find on forums like /b/ and sites
like motherless. The only one I remember by name is shoveldog.gif. I was lashing
out at in a public setting as well as lashing out internally in privacy. I
would give people my address online and tell them to come fight me. I would say
awful things to anyone who dared annoy me, and then I’d give them the
opportunity to come do something about it. No one ever came for me, but they
really and truly should have. Behind closed doors I became obsessed with
violence, pain, and suffering. I had stopped stagnating from trauma and began
to grow. Later in high school I went about life. I got into Odd Future. The
most fucked up rap of the time, with lyrics like “kill people, burn shit, fuck
school”, “Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome”, “Play a
song, invade her thong, My dick is having guts for lunch, as well as supper, then
I’ll rummage through her ruptured cunt, found the mustard, nosey neighbors know
that somethins up”. I became the teenage embodiment of negativity, and I found
outlets that normalized it. I looked to Odd Future artists, Death grips videos, and movies like Irreversible and Salo to find
comfort in my negativity and internal rage, to make me feel like it was normal.
I began to get control of my overwhelming negative emotions. I began to
suppress them, I compartmentalized my demons. They shifted into a deep depression. I graduated high school, did a semester at
CCBC, got my heart broken, was kicked out of the house, moved back in, and went
into construction. By this time I had
minor traumas on top of my negative growth. I thought by handling my problems
with a negative outlet, I was dealing with them. It didn’t click until today
that I was so wrong. I never truly stood back to look into my past until today.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no school shooter, I wasn’t devoid
of happy emotions, but I was consumed by bad energy. After a certain point in
time, malcontent became my normal state. Trauma had caused me to grow into a
societal monster. Through never dealing with the major traumas of my past, I
had developed into an angsty teenage demon. I would say whatever to anyone just
because I could. I was wild, but it soon came to an end. Keep in mind that
whatever you read here isn’t the full breadth of the negative things I’ve done
to people. I’ve got a pillowcase full of demonic candy that I’ll never share
with the people of the world. They will continue to literally haunt me in my
sleep until I’m finally forced to address them, but it won’t be in a forum such
as this.
After a year of concrete demolition, I snapped. I spent an
entire year as a grunt; a lonely, quiet, but still angry, peon. I caught
concrete cores, moved slabs of concrete, drilled holes, moved equipment, filled
tanks, and helped an eclectic group of broken men get through the day. I spent
the entire time of my grunt work career hating my life. I was worthless and to
me it felt like everyone around me felt the same way. We were a league of
unextraordinary no so gentle men. I felt like no one gave a shit about me. I
had a girlfriend, friends, a loving family, but I had never been so alone. I’ve
been a child of divorce, bullied, depressed, suicidal, molested, and anxious,
but nothing was worse than how I felt in 2013 doing construction. I was at the
lowest point in my entire life, and no one wants to fucking address it. “It’s
the past; the past is the past, focus on the present”. No, fuck off, my life
went to hell in a hand basket in 2013 and it’s because my traumatic events
peaked, and I was so overwhelmed that I got pushed into a manic, and then
psychotic state. Following a very depressing, stressful, and anxiety ridden
jobsite in DC, I snapped. I couldn’t stop crying at work. My partner was
bipolar and he was manic as hell. He was super unstable, angry, disgruntled,
and stressed. He freaked me the fuck out, and I broke my back trying to keep
that man happy in any way I could. He snapped one day and punched another
coworker in the face, and that was when I started to get anxious and stressed
as fuck. I was in a 7 story apartment complex, and I was constantly looking
over the edge. I would flirt with the notion of a self conclusion in one
simplified motion (ty sc). I had to quit. I spent the following months as an
agoraphobic with constant panic attacks. I developed three anxious ticks. I
would squint my eyes in pain, shake my hand nervously, and rock myself back and
forth, all too just remain calm. I was like my physical body couldn’t handle
what my mental state was going through. I did this in isolation constantly. I
hid it expertly from my roommates and family.
I had to appear as normal as I could. I didn’t leave the house for a
month. I eventually left to go home and go to therapy. I eventually got drunk
enough to leave the house, but only at night. I’d get smashed playing quarters,
or I’d get ripped as fuck. Nights turned into drunken bouts of fun or long
baked sessions of cruising around College Park. I’d longboard for hours
listening to Ethelwulf and Chief Keef. I smoked so much weed it’s amazing I
didn’t become psychotic sooner. I was constantly online. I was always on
Tumblr. If you go a few blog posts back you can see the manic posts. The manic
nature of them, the toxicity they are laced with, the loss of self. I fell
apart and took my mind with me (ty lum). I had finally drowned in my own
negative indulgences, and because of the mania, the speed in which I drowned
was sped up. I was in a car speeding down a tunnel of darkness; racing towards
what I thought was the light. I was convinced all I knew was pain and
suffering. I thought the only way to live the justly was through pain. I saw
connections in the world that I hadn’t seen before. I quite literally
transcended conventional thought through the mania. You can argue with my that
it was just mania, but mania is almost quite literally a true break from
conventional thought. To everyone around me, I was just a little out of it, but
internally I was losing all sense of self, I was drowning. Everything I held in
for so long, every negative thing I indulged in, fed myself with, it was
drowning me. I was losing myself to the negativity. I was no longer Justin; I
was the sum of every negative event and emotion that I had ever felt. I was my
trauma in its most vile form. I was coherent enough to fool my roommates for a
while that I was fine. It wasn’t until the night that I moved out that I think
they began to notice something was wrong. I thought I was able to read people’s
minds, but I don’t mean literally. I was just hyper-vigilant and very aware of
every single thing around me. I was reading body language, tone of voice,
enunciation of words, everything that a person does to express themselves. I
began telling them who I thought they were in a nutshell. I don’t know if I was
right or wrong, but I was slowly losing my grip on the material world, the
mania was taking total control. I was speaking in metaphors and puzzles that
they brushed off as just me being weird, but to me was the only way I could
communicate my mind. I was doing mental gymnastics just to process everyday
functions. Why I would eat food had to have a reason behind. If I sneezed, I
had to know why and what caused it. I hung on every word and ever little bit of
information I took in had so much more meaning that it really did. I spent two
months working in DC, three months living in College Park, and the entire time
falling into the depths of insanity .The night I moved out of my apartment in
College Park it was at 4 am. I silently moved shelves, a desk, clothes,
cabinets, everything out of the apartment. I moved all of my stuff out of
apartment above the bike shop in secret, in the dead of night, while everyone
slept. Four roommates slept silently as I snuck out, I stuck a note on each one
of their doors with a few words of wisdom, and moved home.
I got home around 6am
and just sat in my car. I was afraid to go in. After two hours I finally went
in. I moved half of my stuff in, but left it in the halls for two days. I was
losing my grip on reality. I thought I could see enlightenment. I thought of
enlightenment as a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel was a light. I dawned
on me what my goal in life was. I had to be myself. I had to unabashedly be me.
I had broken myself down, as a man, a person; a human, and was ready to rebuild
from the ground up. I was ready to be me; to be the version of myself I deep
down always thought I could be. I was convinced that the reason I had spent the
past few months going insane was so thought I could lose all sense of self in
order to gain a new state of being. I was ready to love myself; to overcome my
trauma, to finally deal with my negative emotions and move through the pain. No
one understood this but me. To everyone around me, I was just manic, I was
psychotic, I was out of my mind, but to me, I was ready. I like to think that
if I was never hospitalized that I would have survived and healed a lot sooner
than I did, but I’m not so sure anymore. I think I needed to suffer some more
before I could see the light again. I think the next four years were necessary,
that the suicide attempt had to happen.
I was so deep in the mania in 2013 that I lost myself in my journey
towards an ideal self. I quickly stopped sleeping, speaking coherently, I
became enraged, lashed out aggressively, spoke in constant metaphors and puzzles,
I lost a stable version of myself.
I reluctantly agreed
to go to the hospital after an argument in the kitchen between me, my mom, step
dad, and girlfriend. I went to the hospital with them. Upon arriving at
Shepherd Pratt, I went directly to the receptionist’s desk, pulled up a chair,
and sat right in front of it. I put my feet up on her desk and proceeded to
glare at her. I agreed to come to the hospital, but I didn’t agree to be the
easiest person to deal with. The staff attended to me quickly. A security guard
came out and I was in intake within minutes. The following thirty minutes are a
blur. I remember having an essay on mental illess in one hand and a copy of
Primal Fear in the other. I remember being convinced that all my problems could
be resolved by reading and watching the two. No one listened, and I got angry.
The essay was on mental illness spreading from person to person, and the
defining moment of Primal Fear *Spoiler Alert* was when we find out that Edward
Norton was faking his illness the whole time for attention. At that point I was
gone. I thought I caught the bipolar from my partner in construction and that
somehow I was so good at feigning sick that I had everyone fooled, and I didn’t
need to be hospitalized, I just needed some time alone. I got lost in the angry
in a very short period of time during Pratt intake, and was quickly
hospitalized. I had added more traumas to my already stockpiled list of various
traumas. I was medicated, sedated, and sent on my way after some time.
I spent the following years of 2013-2015 just indulging in
my illness. I fell deeper into a hole of negativity, but this time it was more
controlled. I got into movies drenched in darkness like Ichi the Killer, I
Stand Alone, and Enter the Void. Along with the movies came music from artists
like Death Grips, Bones, Daylight’s early work, Title Fight, and just in
general, stuff that fed into my deeply rooted sadness. No longer was I looking
at gore and torture or the horrors of the world. I had become mature and
refined in my negativity; my self loathing. It became more suppressed. No
longer was it externalized, it become internalized once again. I fell into self
harm, extreme sick fantasies, chronic suicidal ideation, and at the end of
2015, a suicide attempt; I continued to add more and more trauma to my life.
Again, trauma comes in all shapes and sizes; it truly is all
relative.
By 2016, I was
paralyzed. My stagnation reached an all time high. I could bathe, eat,
socialize, and go to work, but nothing else. I became a shell of a man. I faint
glimmer of the person I once was. I was just waiting. I wanted to die, but I
wasn’t strong enough to try suicide again. I waited, I was biding my time.
Waiting for the moment for the door to open and for my chance to run through
it; I wanted to die, but not yet. My doorway to death opened twice between 2017
and 2016, but I never walked through it. I stopped wanting to die, I wanted to
live. I wanted to live bad enough that I had to do something about it. I spent
all of January-April waiting. I was waiting to go into a treatment program. I
spent April-August healing, waiting to feel better.
Here I am now; ready to start my journey into life; to
finally heal the trauma, to go into the light of positivity. I’ve come to
believe in a power higher than myself, and that happens to be the flow and
harmony of the universe. I can see now that the universe loves me. I’m alive to
this day, not because I’m lucky, but because the universe wants me to ride my
wave out. I’m not going to pretend like I’ve dealt with a lifelong of various
traumas in just a period of 5 months, but I am now ready to truly tackle my
demons. Trauma has always been my problem. I am bipolar and I do have sleep
apnea, but those issues are under control. It is not time to deal with trauma.
It has taken 5 months of truly concentrated work, but I’ve finally got the
tools to successfully live my life. My energy is going to shift from being
entirely negative to positive. Fuck bad vibes. Great art often comes through
suffering, but you can’t do shit with that pain if you’re too sick to see it
through, and I’m not talented enough to ever accidently do something. I want to
be an overwhelming force of good energy
I want what Uzis’ got
“I got a colorful aura, like I got neon guts”
Everyone experiences trauma, it is a beast of many forms.
You may or may not be aware of it, but I am almost certain every human has
dealt with it. Some can handle it quite well, others struggle. Life goes on,
the universe gave you what you can handle, the flow of things is endless, and
it has its purpose. Trauma needs to be addressed more often than it is. I’ve
been in treatment for mental health for 5 months, and it wasn’t until today
that I realized, trauma has been a many tailed beast in my life. If you’re
having a hard time in life, if you’re stuck in your ways, reflect on your life.
Think things through, address your past, question your present, and truly
reflect. Everything happens for a reason, whether it’s for a good reason or a
bad reason is another story, but things are all connected. No amount of
suffering is small, it truly is all relative.
BLOG 16
Friday 9/15/17
I’m starting your letter tonight, and its going to be the
first of the batch. I’m sure you are
going to mind, but try to not get to hung up on any grammar and syntax
problems, school was never my cup of tea. We just had a conversation outside
for a few minutes between you, Corey, Lindsey, and I. Corey left, and the
conversation continued. Ultimately nothing I say here will have any immediate
or profound effect on you. I can’t make you think any thought or do any action
with through my own words. What I can do is attempt a little trick I learned
from Christopher Nolan. The plan is to incept some sort of idea in your mind
that in turn will blossom into something beneficial to your life. Self
affirmation, understanding core beliefs, honesty, and commitment are all the
skills you need. Getting better is bullshit. It will in the end all seem
obvious and dumb, but on their way there won’t make any god damn sense. You didn’t get to where you were in a few
hours, days, or weeks. It took years of living to lead you up to the very
moment you are reading this. You’ve been at recovery for a long time now, and
you are most likely aware of all of this, but I just wanted to start this with
all this shit.
You need to write, a lot. You need to journal until you can’t anymore. I do it through blogging, I suggest you do it however you feel comfortable. Write what makes you feel anger, hate, love, distrust, write about bad events in your life, map out your emotional journey up until this point. Once you’ve got yourself mapped out in writing in front of you, relax. When you can step back and see yourself outside of yourself, the first step has already been taken. When I started the blogs, I had no direction. My only goal was to write my experiences out and share them with anyone willing to listen. I love social media. I love the idea of people getting to know me through a controlled and contained environment. So I took to blogging and posting it on facebook. I think my entire emotional journey up until a few weeks ago has, for the most part, been written about in my blog. Obviously you can’t write every little thing, but write what you think matters. If you think it matters, then it does. If that means you have to write a short novel, then so be it, it’s entirely your journey. I guess I didn’t write about the highs in my life, I focused on the lows. I looked at the writing as a means of sucking out the venom. The words typed acted as a vacuum to suck the venom out of my life, which I would then dump into Microsoft word and organize into sentences. Suck out the venom as coherently are you can. Organize your life in writing. Look at what could have been traumatic. So many things in our lives are traumatizing that we aren’t aware of. A girl in 4th telling me that lacing up my skate shoes was gay was traumatizing. I spent the rest of my life investing stupidly in nice shoes. Look for every single potentially traumatizing event in your life, and how you handled them. For me, I handled them with anger and hate. It may seem odd to you now, but I used to be an asshole. I’d call kids out; I was a racist little cunt. I’d pick fights with kids online and then give them my address and tell them to come fight me. I internalized and suppressed my trauma, my emotions, and it came out in a truly venomous fashion. I’ve said shit to people that no one should ever repeat, but no one ever came to my house to fight me. Look at what’s happened to you, and how you’ve handled it. Did you handle it the right way? Was there deeper meaning behind how you acted when and why? Does this compute? I won’t know. By the time you read this, I’ll be states away and unable to respond for some time. You need to suck the venom out, spit it out, and write with it. See what comes up as you did this. In one afternoon I wrote 9 pages single spaced on trauma because I had a good conversation with Oscar. I came to realize so much through writing that single post. I’m like 21 posts deep in my blog. If you want the url its channelegnaro.blogspot.com. That being said, I can’t emphasize how important is. You can process all you want in your head, but ultimately it’s still you inside of you. You’re bias because when you think on thoughts, you’re the only one in control. When you put stuff into writing, it becomes more objective than if you were to hold it all in. It’s also just a very cathartic experience. You said you were going to do some writing tonight, so hopefully that continues and this is all something you’ve heard or done before. I’m going to go mug farmers in a game for a bit and revist this letter in another week or so. Peace.
BLOG 17
Something is always something
Very rarely, if ever, is something nothing
Except maybe a black hole
There's always exceptions to the rule
Rules must exist
Rules must be broken
The earth continues to spin
Baker blues
I drink the coffee to drown the smoke
I smoke to cough down the coffee
It's never ending
A constant back and forth
On the porches at baker
The house of illnes
Addiction here shifts
It becomes
Caffeine and nicotine
5 minutes
Why smoke?
Slow suicide?
No
It gives me purpose for 5 minutes
I have one clear cut goal
Smoke the cigarette
Relax &Think, Reflect & Process
A toxic meditation
But a meditation none the less
Inhale, Exhale
A toxic process for 5 minutes
One simple goal
Inhale, Exhale
Eyes
What do you think when your eyes roll back into your head
Why do they roll back
Is it anger? Disgust? Humor?
I can feel my eyes rolling back
But I feel none of the above
No
Today they roll back because they are alone
They alone have seen my day
They alone will see my tommorow
They alone see my world
My eyes roll back out of loneliness today
Solipsism
You ever look around and ponder
Everyone you see has a life
Their own thoughts, desires, dreams
Their own life
Everyone's an individual
Not just you
You may only know you
But there is an entire world of you out there
Someone who's not me just had a baby boy
Someone who's not me just lost her virginity
Someone who's not me just killed a child
Someone is anyone & anyone is someone
Sometimes its easy to forget that you're not the only one
that truly exists
Don't forget
Where am I?
I'm here right now
Present in the moment
The cars hum by
The nearby night crickets have started their evening
conversations
The trees flow steadily in the distance
Where am I, While you're back home
I'm present right now
The bugs sound off around me
Humming sweet nothings to one another as time crawls by
Birds tweet quietly as their day comes to an end
A motorcycle chugs on in the distance
Where am i
I'm sitting outside of a church, waiting
I'm still right here
I'm mindfull
Lilac lovers
Suicide is only a stones throw away at any moment
An old friend I've become too familiar with
A frog in the middle of the pond
No one but I alone understands the relationship
The frog croaks on as I skip stones
The pebbles ripple through the water
Disrupting the frogs endless croaking
Lilly pads shift accross the waters face
Another stone is skipped
The frogs croak is drowned out in a plop as he fall in
My old friend is now nowhere to be seen
A relationship only I understand
He will resurface eventually
But for now he floats beneath the surface
Halloween
I've a Pillowcase of demonic candy I'm not sharing
Secrets better yet unspoken to the world
Candy on Halloween that I keep to myself
It's not for you, it's for me
I share a lot of sweet tasty things with the world
But I've got a pillowcase full of bitter sweets that will
forever remain mine
At least for this year's halloween
Milo
I'm stressed & Overwhelmed by feelings I can't shake
I want to Flourish in the lag time
But I remain stunted from the moment I wake
This moment won't pass, this lag time
This pause is key, but shouldn't exist
not while I wake
I sit and pass the time trying to rhyme
Avoiding the urge to inhale & exhale
I'm missing the buckets, lacking the s. l. i. m. e
Emotions trapped deep inside a crevice
The present should be mine
It's never to late
I will Flourish in the lag time
Murph
At the starting of the week It's only monday
Dj shadow structured the day
Time spent wasted drowning in a snow drenched sleigh
Anxious as fuck I can't get out of myself
I need to break down the bales of hay
Bed my pen
Create my routine
Flourish as time idles
I can feel the time slow on as I rewind
Moments turn to minutes
Turn to seconds
Back to hours
Crawling backwards to old times
Old ways, old patterns, old routines
I don't want to be here anymore
But where am I?
What state am I in?
I'm still in michigan
Somehow trapped in Maryland
Fight the quicksand, Slug out of the pit
Tar dripping from my pits, Slime falling off my sides
Where am I?
I know what state I'm in
I'm in a new state, a new maryland
My land
Still stuck in Michigan
UWTB
The wind blows inconsistently across self
I feel an absence of the universe within
Its grip released, I float
Motionless in air, suspended in limbo
I float aimlessly as life speeds around me
Never once stopping to ask me
Are you coming down?
Never once stopping to remind me
The universe still flows for me
It's only when I flow against it
That the dueling flows suspend me in air
In a lifelike limbo
emotional roller coaster with pipe dreams
I hold onto these pipe dreams
Dreams of tunnels that I can see the light at the end
of
Dreams that are meant to be just that
Dreams
The universal will to become is a powerful thing
Human will, desire, passion, all powerful things
I lack several and make up for some in an abundance of
others
My eggs are sitting, waiting in a basket
I was never any good at finding them in easter
For now happiness is the dry side of a spit cup
I need a place to hide
Can I call you home
How long does boyish charm last
Bernard Marx & Helmhotz watson
I often wonder if others are like me
Am I exceptionally unique
Or am I just part of a whole
Just human and intricate to a t
Do you ever find yourself staring out the window
Thinking about thoughts past and present
Focusing on the moment as it glides by
Somehow we're part of a whole
But individuality plays a part in each of us
BLOG 18
I’m about to move back home after a long hiatus from my
life. I’ve taken the time over the last two weeks to put into writing some
events and thoughts on my time in Michigan. If you’ve wondered what I’ve been
up to for the past 6 months, this is the general gist of it at its most
interesting. I think this is going to be my last personal and public post in
regards to this blog. I think I’ve said all I’ve wanted to say, bitched about
all I’ve felt the need to bitch about, and I’ve got most of the venom in my life
written out in this blog. This last post is the longest and most thought out
post of all. This marks the end of my personal writings and the start of
creatively writing. I’ve been stuck creatively always writing about mental
illness and just bleak stuff. I always end the story with death or trepanation.
I think having taken all my negative and ill harbored feelings in my life and
put them outside of myself, not just in writing, but in life too, that now I
will be free of their affects. I get to go home today. No more routine of
others accord. No more frolicking with the campus zombies. No more therapy with
that god damn idiot. The end of the beginning is currently underway.
BLOG 19
I wanted to stop writing stuff for this blog. I wanted to
stop talking about myself, to believe I was “recovered’. Tomorrow marks exactly
a month since I’ve been home from Michigan; since I’ve left my treatment life
for my real life. Things haven’t been going the way I wanted them to. They’ve
actually gone as bad as they probably could. I may be over exaggerating; I am
over exaggerating, but I am miserable. I’ve not been as sober as I want to be,
I barely exercise, I eat out, I don’t have as solid of relationships as I
wanted, I have the same job that drove me crazy at one point, I feel empty and
useless, everything feels fucking wrong. I have these reoccurring nightmares of
my trauma where I am no longer the victim; sometimes I am, but now I am also
the aggressor. Can you imagine what that’s like? To have an incredibly visceral
dream of such a traumatic event where you are the one inflicting the trauma on
others? I have violent and constantly negative intrusive thoughts that no one
can help me with. I thought everything would come so easily with my return
home. That somehow everything had been fixed, that I was finally done my
journey to recovery. I knew that wasn’t the case on some level, but on the
surface I very much so wanted to believe it that. I had a lot of fail safes in
place in case this happened. It’s taken about a month for things to get bad
enough that I need to go through and activate each one. To reset my life again,
but this time include what I spent six months learning. About two months ago I
was in an NA meeting and I wrote a letter to myself in case something like this
happened. I was in an amazing place when I wrote it; I wasn’t unreasonable
happy, I was just pleasantly content. The letter was a reminder that I could
feel this great again; all I had to do was work for it. I worked towards being
happy in a fake life, now it’s time to work towards being happy in my real
life. I think that’s where I have gone wrong. I have just expected happiness,
or feelings of content to come naturally. That all I needed to do was to change
a few simple things, go back to some old patterns, but ultimately not change
much, and everything would be right as rain. I was wrong. I have to constantly
work towards feeling content. If being content in life is like balancing plates
on a pole, then I have to maintain constant vigilance to assure myself that the
plates don’t fall. If they are to fall, it is my duty to myself to be aware of
this; to clean up the mess, and to then proceed to get a new plate and get back
to balancing. Nothing happens without effort. Nothing worthwhile in life comes
at ease, and if it does, you should seriously question it, but that’s just my
belief as I’m writing this. I hate that instead of working on one of the
various ideas for a short story that I have my first writing venture upon
returning home is this. I have a lot that I need to work. I have a lot that I’m ashamed about, now I
have the drive to pick up the shattered plate shards. Because for the past few
weeks I’ve been dancing on glass and pretending like it doesn’t hurt.
BLOG 20
“isolation caved in”
For
someone with lots of people in their life who loves, cares, and is willing to
help them, I am incredibly alone. I don’t exactly give anyone the chance to
help me feel less alone, and that’s the problem. I’ve convinced myself that
I’ve given everyone an equal chance to help me and that everyone has come up
short of assistance and that I truly am alone. Because I often feel that I am
the only me in the world, I am doomed to be alone as a result. Being around
people can be exhausting, but it can always be the most enervating experience
ever. I swear I’m an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s body. I love
attention. I love people. I love being entertaining and making people laugh. I,
for some reason, like to think that I dislike most people. I’m convinced no one
really has anything of use to offer me, and if they do, they do it indirectly.
I am so lonely, and it is my fault.
I realized a few
weeks ago how heavily invested in the online community I am. I am always on the
god damn internet. Whether its facebook, instagram, snapchat, or reddit, I am
always online; plugged into the world. For someone who works so hard to be
alone and alienate themselves from people I have deemed useless to me, I so
desperately seek attention and connection from anyone who’s willing to show it
online. I use facebook as a sort of social fishing game of sorts. I throw out a
lines (posts) baited with lyrics, funny phrases, trailers, songs, albums,
anything to hook someone in and talk to me. I have no idea why I’d rather
interact online than in person. I think it has to do with how incredibly
uncomfortable I am with myself. How I truly dislike who and how I am in person.
Online I am free to be me without any sort of blockade set up by my psychical
self? I am not sure really. I am desperately reaching out for some sort of
connection in a virtual medium where I feel most comfortable interacting with
others. A medium where I am not myself, but somehow convinced I am as genuine
as possible.
I cut back on social
media like two weeks ago. I deleted most of my instagram, stopped using
snapchat and facebook as much. I realized I was just putting my life on display
to a degree that I was not in control of. That’s the weird thing though…
considering I post this blog online and it is truly the most open source of
information about myself that one could find anywhere online, but the
difference is its entirely intentional and guided in its purpose. For instance,
posting a picture on instagram of myself with my CPAP mask on with in a dark
room smothered in covers with a caption beneath it reading “isolation caved in”
is somehow more disturbing to me than me writing a 3 page blog post about being
molested. When I went through my instagram deleting everything, I could see a
trend. Looking at the dates of posts and the general content of the posts, I
could tell how I was feeling at that point in time. I had been telling the
world how fucking unhappy, self loathing, bored, and awful I was feeling all
the god damn time, and I wasn’t aware of it at all. There was a month long
period where I posted the same three pictures with the caption “I fell apart
and took my mind with me”, and during that month I was breaking on all sides. I
remember posting those and writing that caption, but I never gave any thought
as to why. It was just something I felt like had to happen. I had to express
this overwhelmingly bad emotion I was feeling, and this was an easy method that
was a sort of knee jerk expression. I just kind of posted random stuff online
either for fun or because I was struck by a specific emotion at a certain point
in time. Rather than drawing it or
writing about it, I formulated it into a social media post. I was leaving a
detailed bread crumb trail behind that always led into a description of my
mental states. The lyrics, the images, the videos, it was all connected to
feelings I felt I had no other method of expressing. I did not like having this
candid map of my mental state on instagram, so I deleted everything but stuff I
found entertaining. I stopped posting on facebook except for when I wanted to
bookmark something like a video or song that couldn’t save with my pocket app.
I’ll use snapchat when I’m bored, but I generally just goof around on that now.
For a while my only goal online was to be as entertaining as possible, to be as
ridiculous and funny as possible. Somewhere along that line, I don’t know when,
I got lost and began to use it as a way to express myself. Expressing yourself
through social media is like using drugs because it makes you “creative”. It is
just dumb and reaps instant benefits. I got further lost in myself, in my
loneliness, in my alienation from the world, and I think my use of the internet
is somewhat to blame for that; at least my use and function with it is.
I am still alone;
nothing has changed except for the fact that I’m less active on the internet
and indirectly open about it. I don’t think I’ll stop being lonely for a while,
but I think it will change. I am working on being a person in the real world
again, but it is not easy. I really dislike myself. I work at a job where I am
constantly interacting with people, making phone calls, doing intake,
constantly being forced to watch myself interact in person with people. This
sounds silly, but this is weird for me.
BLOG 21
This will be something eventually
Something is always something
Very rarely, if ever, is something nothing
Except maybe a black hole
There are always exceptions to the rule
Rules must exist
Rules must be broken
The earth continues to spin
Where Am I?
For the past 6 months I’ve lived in a residential living
facility in Michigan. The facility is called Dandy Hill, and I’ve grown to hate
a lot about it, but I have had moments of major self growth in between my
displeasure.
Dandy Hill is conveniently located next to Great Lakes
National Cemetery. Feeling rough waking
up in a residential living facility? Not quite sure how to get your day going?
Listen closely; “Bang, Bang, Bang”, you can hear a twenty one gun salute echo
out, just a stones through away. It serves as a reminder that death is always
near, even if you are in a mental health facility. What a lovely perk.
There's four programs all intermingled here. Kelly Center
(general mental illness), Baker House (Co occurring - addiction and mental
illness), Horton House and Malta (ones for long term residents and the other is
for the older folks, don't remember which is which. Would it matter if I did?).
I’m not going to pretend like I know anything about the programs other than co
occurring so I’ll just leave them for now. I live in Baker house.
Dandy Hill is like a college campus for the incapable and
court ordered. There is a farm, and the aforementioned houses. There are about
40+ residents, on campus at all times. I’d assume there’s always at least 20
staff on deck, except at night time, then there is generally less. Staff
communicates mostly over walkie talkie, but also through land lines. They have
to constantly keep an eye on us. If we wonder off somewhere, they need to
walkie in
“Can I get a visual on so and so?” Some residents wonder off
more than others.
The
residents walk like zombies day in day out. They drone onward towards the
Gundle Center for groups, the farm for work, therapist for sessions; brains are
usually the last thing on their minds, but that’s not their fault; Thorazine
shuffle. Most walk with nothing but absence of the mind, never fully knowing
why they’re doing what they’re told, but never failing to do it.
In the groups we do a variety of things. Activities have to
be accessible to an array of mentally capable people. As a result, nothing is
as engaging as it should be for the amount of money this place costs, but they
do their best. People float mindlessly through the allotted group time each
session; they usually last about an hour, sometimes less. Sometimes the groups
help, but the indifferent air of this place makes it hard to care. Sometimes
staff strikes a nerve in a resident that rings throughout the rest of their
day. What was meant to help them only hurts them. The truth may hurt, but
sometimes the truth shouldn’t be dished out all at once, or at all. Some things
people need to find out for themselves. Some of us are so far from seeing the
truth, that even the idea of being honest is truly devastating, it breaks some.
The staff pisses us off, and then sends us on our way; a jolly mood for the
rest of the day. There is no way that they aren’t aware when they agitate a
resident. I don’t understand why they seem unaffected by the resident’s obvious
increased distress. I imagine they’re just so used to it. We are like animals
to them sometimes, or that’s what it feels like. Herded from one thing to the
next; imagine someone trying to herd cats. Generally the staff is really nice
and down to earth, but they get paid to act a certain way around us. I don’t
think it matters what they say to each other behind our backs, but I’m sure
they exchange an array of thoughts on us at times.
The schizophrenic
girl outside the Gundle groups likes to smoke everyone's cigarette butts. Her
name is Kayla, and she’s always up to something inherently interesting. She
shaved her head the day after last. She likes to stack blades of grass in
horizontal lines on her thigh. I think I saw that in a movie once. Her legs are
covered in a thick coat of hair. Her voice is ethereal and glides through the
air with surprising ease for someone with such an abrasive appearance. I could
list off endlessly interesting things about her. There is not sexual attraction
to her, but I find her very peculiar, and thus she has my attention whenever
she is around.
Schizophrenia seems
like the hot ticket round town. Lots of schizophrenic people here; zombies and
weight gain for days. One time when I was in the bathroom, I watched a woman
use a mirror to explain to a resident what reality was. She ensured him that
everything he could see and physically touch was reality, that if he saw it in
the mirror, and felt it in reality, then it was indeed real. “This is real” she
said, and she lifted up his hands and touched his face.
Bipolar is the second most popular item on the Dandy Hill
ticket, but I don’t think I’ve seen any bipolar moments. People are usually
hospitalized when their mania is on the fritz, and depression is too easily
described. Lots of people here suffer from extreme depression, but I can’t tell
which ones are bipolar and which aren’t, it isn’t any of my business anyway. I
feel as if that’s ironic.
“Can
I get a visual on Kayla?”
Kayla
was walking into the swamp
Let us Dance
Ever
been to a special occasion at a residential living facility? Like a dance,
or a big dinner with music? It's almost exactly like you'd imagine, if you're
imagining something. I've been to three soirees here. All had music; either a
DJ or a really dusty old band of white guys. Staff stood on the outskirts of
the table’s kind of just watching everything. The lucid residents usually sat
together, and the less than sound folks usually gravitated towards each other
like magnets. The dusty old white men; it’s always men, try to liven us up, get
us pumped. How pumped can you be living at Dandy Hill?
Usually
two people get up and dance in front of over 40 people sitting awkwardly
wishing they were elsewhere. The dancers either aren't the most present, or
they're the schizophrenic cig butt smoker Kayla. She always dances. She truly
marches to her own tune. Aside from her though, the disjointed residents dance
just like you'd imagine; if you're even imagining it. They just kind of sway
and flail about to the music; never on rhythm. Kayla glides through the air
like she is hearing an inaudible frequency only she is in tune with.
This one time they
did karaoke. A friend of mine you haven’t been introduced to yet was singing
some Billy idol. He nailed the song, he was so much better than I expected. He
loves karaoke, but he’d never done it sober. Between the microphone and the
audience was about a 40ft gap of no man's land. People went up to sing in front
of a large crowd with no one showing any interest at all, you had to admire the
singers for their courage, I think that’s a staple of all karaoke. Dandy Hill
Karaoke continued for a handful of minutes. No one else I knew went up, but
someone did a Linkin Park song, Chester had just killed himself two days prior.
At the same event, a few of us were playing
corn hole. We were just having fun, minding our own business, when this kid
walks up. He was a big guy, 6'2 with a stocky build. He came up quietly and
watched us play. After about 5 minutes he started questioning us as to why we
made him feel stupid, why we were calling him names. Why we were always out to
get him, why we kept insisting he was stupid. I got scared. I huffed up, as I
often do when I feel like someone is violently unpredictable, I was ready for anything
to happen. Hunter S. Thompson said to never turn your back on drugs; I say to
never turn your back on the psychotic.
Your idea of
psychotic and the definition of psychotic are probably two very different
things. Or not, who knows.
He started
yelling at us; he didn't move a single muscle, with the exception of his mouth.
He started talking about how he could destroy the world. How we wouldn't let
him play corn hole because he's stupid, how people hated him because his dad's
rich. The four of us playing corn hole just acted like we couldn't hear him
after a period of time. You can't indulge those on an aggressive break from
reality, not when you're not trained to do so. He kept going on and on about
shit. We ignored him to a point, but he started singling us out and saying we
were specific aggressors against him. We asked if he was alright, but he
responded with "why, you wouldn't care if I was", he wasn't wrong. I
didn't give a fuck if he was or wasn't okay, at this point I just wanted him to
piss off. He was making me uncomfortable. I don’t have a good track record for
dealing with the psychotic. In fact, I loathe the aggressively psychotic. I've
been there, I've been there with other people, there's no salvation in a short
period of time. I avoid them. We all ignored him after we asked if he needed
help. He walked away after a few moments of silence.
He got sent to a hospital within the next week; somewhere he
should have been in the first place. A
few days following that interaction he escaped from Dandy Hill. He ran out to a
nearby highway and started flagging down cars. He was yelling about how people
at Dandy Hill were against him, that we were trying to kill him. I can see how
he imagined that. You may think you can help a psychotic person, but if they
are truly psychotic, get them to a hospital. I'm lucky I made it to one in time
when I was.
“Can I get a visual on
Kayla?”
Kayla
was playing with the flowers outside of the greenhouse
Baker’s Dozen
Baker house is my home. The house is a melting pot of
mentally ill addicts. For a while it was all boys. They called us the Baker
Boys. My room is to the left of the entrance, right down the hall from case
manager’s office. Her office used to be the 7th bedroom, but it became an
office instead. I’m sure it was a decision made for the best. I spend a lot of
time in my room either writing, reading, or gaming. Sometimes I walk out of my
room with a handful of love. Once it happened as staff was walking by; I gave
her a big smile and a nod as I walked to the shower. On a surface level we live
like normal people here, but at the core we have a lot more structure than one
would have in the outside world. We live in a house with a 1st floor and a
basement; the name of this house style escapes me. The house has six bedrooms,
four bathrooms, two living rooms, an organ, stationary bike, and two decks;
it's pretty nice.
The screen door on the upstairs deck sticks, but it slides
smoothly if you lift it.
Once or twice a week we take turns cooking for six. I'm
either cooking some vegan shit with the resident red head, or I'm cooking my
signature bland blend. I like to make some plain chicken bake, sautéed
broccoli, and brown rice. I bake the chicken with olive oil, orange and yellow
peppers, garlic, sweet onions, and tomatoes.
My case manager is like the house punching bag. We beat down
half of the stuff she says, and just constantly shit all
over her, metaphorically speaking. She just takes it like a champ. She's
probably my second favorite staff here. The first being a grunt staff of sorts.
Two conversations I’ve had with him have changed my view on life for the best
and most likely forever. One conversation was on the topic of trauma, and the
other was essentially on human potential and the “Universal Will to Become”
I’ve lived with an eclectic group of people over the past
few months. It’s been a total of 9 people overall, each with their own hang-ups
and DOC’s. Not to mention the assortment of diverse personalities all across
the entire campus. One of the gentlemen I’ve lived with was this 48 year old
man named Tony. We all call him Uncle Tony, and lately he’s been drowning. Each
foot caught in the hardened cement of his past; you’d think someone had thrown
him into a body of water and left him to drown. I like Uncle Tony. He was my
first friend here; the first person I really connected with. I remember when we
hit it off. We had a three hour conversation over Marlboro reds and watered
down coffee. It was my third day here. We got to talking about the movie Alien
and how truly terrifying H.R Giger’s Xenomorph was. I realized I have an odd
memory for specific details with people. Tony graduated high school in 86,
likes Tabasco and pico de gallo with his scrambled eggs, and his favorite game
is an old RTS game called Alpha Centarui. He’s also a big fan of
stoicism, and has read quite extensively on the subject.
I've shown him an
array of movies. For a while there, he was the only reason I wanted to watch
movies. We’d sit silently in the living room and go on little adventures
together. We watched a good bit of Korean and Japanese stuff together. The most
riveting movie I’ve shown him was Oldboy. I mean the original Oldboy, not that
American piece of trash Spike Lee made. He was amazed how everything made sense
come the final scene of the film. He didn’t imagine they could wrap up all
those themes and events into one logical plot.
Uncle Tony is
intelligent and argumentative to a fault; a debater at his very core. Never
have I met a human with such vast knowledge of history and philosophy. A man
with the ability to formulate arguments that hurt to discuss, but somehow
always managed to draw you in. His firm grasps on history and philosophy had
made him quite equipped for formulating arguments of all sorts. He almost
compulsively trolls online; a frequenter of the “Chan’s”, his favorites being
/leftypol/, /r9k/, and /ROBOT9001/. He is quite good at taking painfully honest
sides on any argument he so wishes. He is currently in an argument over the
book of Leviticus and some other religious text; which book is more meaningful,
and which isn’t. He likes to piss people off anonymously. I identify with that,
but I do it in a much more ignorant, less intelligent fashion, and I was never
anonymous. It’s hard to keep up with all his arguments. He has a tendency to
ramble beyond the point of surface level comprehension, consistently losing the
interest of anyone but those he argues with. None of us want to get into a
debate with him, it’s pointless. If he were younger I'd assume he'd an overweight
fedora wearing neck beard with a sticky body pillow and a collection of Gundam
figurines, but he’s a different beast entirely. I’m not sure which is better.
He actually has a fedora here with him though, but he looks classy in it, at
least on the days he’s happy enough to wear it. I hope he gets better. He's a
really nice guy, like a really nice guy. He always packs his cigarette on his
wrist watch before he smokes; if he doesn't, something usually isn't right. I
haven’t seen him tap the butt of his cigarette on his wrist watch in a while.
“Can I get a visual on Kayla?”
Kayla
walked off from farm duty and was cleaning windows.
Mr. Abs
I don't have much to say about everyone else I've lived
with. They are annoying, funny, bright, interesting people, but nothing
exceptionally noteworthy. Nothing I'd write home about. Except for Mr. Abs, he
warrants a few notes. He is annoying as fuck, paranoid as hell, and has the
maturity of a fifteen-year-old with developmental issues. He's a few years
older than me, and I’ll let you in on a little secret; his name isn’t really
Mr. Abs. For a while though, he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about his abs. He had
no abs, and in fact, he was steadily gaining weight, but he would constantly
lift his shirt and ask everyone: “Can you see my abs? How do my abs look?” It
became a running joke of sorts in the house.
“Let
me see your abs”
“Can
you see the outline of my abs?”
“What
can I do to work on my lower abs?”
It didn’t help that he would randomly start doing sit-ups on
the spot; whether it be doing groups or in the middle of making dinner, Mr. Abs
would just pop on down and bust out some crunches.
He used to do
this thing where he would confess all his sins to me or staff. He'd come into
my room with this deep sense of urgency in his voice and say, "Dude, can I
tell you something?" He'd list off all his crimes, and was looking for
something like forgiveness from me. I never fully understood it, but it went.
At first he was
convinced we were all cops. It freaked him out. He then felt a need to confess
to these “cops”, maybe that's why he'd confess to me, and maybe I was a cop to
him. He's schizophrenic. That all passed though; he’s just annoying most of the
time now; the village idiot. He farts a lot, eats obscene amounts of food, and
smokes lots of cigarettes. He actually smokes so much that the outskirts of his
mouth get stained brown from the nicotine. Sometimes when he farts he will call
your name out, make eye contact, and then waft his fart into his face as he
snorts, it truly is wonderful.
He's got a nasty
habit of beating a dead horse. Like really kicking the shit out of the horse,
and then somehow killing it again after it’s been dead for days. He repeats all
of our jokes back to us. Often, after repeating the jokes, or funny comments back
to us, he laughs like Ash does at the lamp in Evil Dead 2.
“Hey Justin,
remember that time you saw the dishes and said “GOD DAMNIT”
“Hey Tony, what was that you said? “Ah what the hell”
On an almost daily basis he does this sucking noise with his
mouth that sounds like a vacuum sucking up liquid. Other times he would just
laugh out loud and quite hard for now visible or audible reason. I never
understood those laughs, never tried to. For a while there he would come into
my room and just do a pelvic thrust into the air while laughing like a nut.
He's a sad strange man, but we all have our problems here.
He walked into town
last night, made it to Holly before the cops picked him up. He’s here for
serious drug use and Schizophrenia. He has a long road ahead of him, but that
doesn’t make him any less of an annoyance, but he has his moments. I learned
his eating habits are so that he can curb pill cravings. He's gained over 40lbs
since he's been here. He likes hockey and golf. His daddy owns a furniture
store. He still functions like he did when he was in Jail. How he managed to
not get the shit kicked out of him in jail, I have no idea.
Mr. Abs has no abs, and in fact, has quite the gut.
Notes on Friday
Today is Friday. We have a really shitty NA meeting to go
to. They say no meeting is a shitty one, but I swear this one is. It's almost
entirety made up of residents from Dandy Hill, and no one fucking talks. You
ever sat in a room of ten people where no one talks for long stretches of time?
It's fucking uncomfortable. For a while I'd bring a notebook and write poetry,
raps, or doodle. Now I just stay in the van and read. Last week I was reading A
Brave New World, this week it's The Stranger by Camus. I'm not even
going to go to the meeting. They say no meeting is a bad meeting, but there are
exceptions to every rule.
“Can
I get a visual on Kayla?”
Kayla
was walking behind Baker house after dark
Someone snapped a chicken’s neck on the farm a while back.
People think it was, Kayla, but no one knows for sure. The ash tray adventurer
has the most stock in my fascination at this place. I quite like “the cig butt
smoker” as a title, but ash tray adventurer has a nice ring to it. She deserves
something more interesting than any normal name. When I sit next to her in art
therapy, she's always doing wonderful things with colors. I can see in her
colors that she doesn't think like me, or anyone else I've met for that matter.
She thinks in such a unique and abstract way that it's foreign even to my
aberrance. She presses the pastel chalk down on the paper and motions it up and
down like she’s ironing the page with color. It’s like each color is a thought,
and each thought has to be ironed out until fully processed. Once that thought
is over, another enters in the form of a new color; another piece of chalk.
Rinse and repeat. After some time she has what I imagine are a jumble of
thoughts strewn across the paper in vivid detail. No real pattern in them, just
ironed out colors on top of one another; a vibrant display of mentally unhinged
tie-dye. Her mind is truly an anomaly.
Chaos is Order Yet Undeciphered on a Thursday
It’s Thursday, and it’s time to throw the outing dart at the
dart board. Will it be Wal-Mart, or will we get treated to Target? This place
has been equal parts exhausting and rejuvenating. I've got 3.2 weeks left as
I'm writing this sentence. I'm sitting in the signature Dandy Hill clown van
heading to town. Once a week they oh-so lovingly allow us to go to a store in
town. Usually it's Wal-Mart, but if we play our cards right, it’s Target.
Hit.
It’s Wal-Mart.
This week I’m going to be torn between buying wet wipes for
my ass or a pack of cigarettes. I've been trying to quit, but a man needs some
vices, right? I’ve grown tired of cigarettes lately, but they are such a staple
of my time here. I’ve started to become aware of the taste of my rotting lungs.
That sounds more morbid than it should, but I’m more conscious of the fact that
I have bad breath, and the source of it is coming from within me, not a dirty
mouth. When I get home on October 14th at 6:30ish pm, I'll venture to stop
smoking cigs, but for now I’m going to inhale that sweet, sweet death.
They're my little toxic meditation.
Light one up, sit outside, play music, inhale deeply,
exhale, inhale, exhale; a very toxic meditation indeed.
I couldn't tell you where I think this block of text is
going. I could say something like I’m chiseling it out to make a story out of
my experience here, but I'm really just killing time. I’m still in the van on
the way to
Hit.
Wal-Mart.
I have to pee.
”Head in the Ceiling Fan” by Title Fight plays somberly
through my headphones.
You grow accustomed to looking out the van windows longingly
here. The power lines aside the road flow up and down as the car floats onward.
Our lives at Dandy Hill aren't real, they're treatment lives. I can't go where
I want, or do as I please. I have to be driven everywhere, things need be
approved, and my daily life is structured by another. I’m forced to go places I
don’t want to go to, take meds at certain times, and live with people who annoy
me. I miss simple things. I miss waiting outside of my car while I get gas.
Those three minutes of mind-numbing boredom while I stare at the gas nozzle,
willing it to fill up faster, I miss that. I miss those last three hours at
work as the restaurant winds down and I have nothing to do but listen to the
patrons ramble drunkenly about their lives. I miss my life.
The guy that sits in front of me in the van sometimes likes
to pick at his ear. He just did so not once, not twice, not thrice, but more.
He went five, six, then seven times more. I counted up to fifteen times of this
guy digging his finger into his ear and then pulling it out to examine it
before I stopped counting. He did it two more times.
Hit.
I’m at Wal-Mart now.
Wal-Mart is still the pits. For the first few weeks I was
here I'd buy movies with my weekly allowance of $10. I bought The Grey, The
Grand Budapest Hotel, 13 Assassins, Sicario, Hell or High Water, and probably a
few others, but I can’t remember them right now. I buy cigarettes, olive oil,
detergent, batteries, and tomatoes these days. Today I think I'll buy
specifically wet wipes and tomatoes.
I got 97-cent Q-tips
too.
After all the exciting shopping is done, we wait inside
Wal-Mart at Subway, “eat fresh.” For one day a week, spare maybe three times,
for the last five months, I have spent on average, fifteen minutes sitting in
Subway waiting. That may not sound like long, but time lives differently in a
place like Wal-Mart. I also hate Subway. Your time is no longer of value at
Dandy Hill. You get a talking to if your time interferes with the staff’s time,
because your time doesn't mean shit. So much of my time has been wasted, lost
for good. A lot of the last 150ish days have been washed out, but not all of
them. There have been a few key days. Two of them involved the same staff
member. I spoke of him earlier.
I have a
parliament loosie behind my ear, gym shorts on, thrift store crew neck, and my
shoes are currently off and exactly one foot length in front of me. I sit at
the two-top in the corner of the store. I can see all the comings and goings of
the glorious threshold that is a Wal-Mart entrance.
I've seen a few amazing people walk in and out of here over
the past few months. A lot of people just make me grateful that I am who I am,
where I am. They make me feel not so wasteful about my time. I often think,
fuck, at least I'm not them. But maybe that's not an okay thought, or is it?
Which thoughts
are okay, and which aren't? Truth without tact is cruelty, but what’s better, a
cruel truth or a lie. Don't be a dick; an easy principle to vocalize, but much
harder to live by internally.
This dude just walked in with the most glorious pony tail
mullet. If you have pony tail mullet in 2017, you're doing something
right. Let freedom ring. That wasn't my initial thought, but it is a more
tactful one. Truth without tact is cruelty.
Who the fuck buys
tomatoes from Wal-Mart? Me. This man just walked in, very clearly a man, but
with a very ample breasts. Was that tactful, or just cruel? I didn't vocalize
it, and perhaps I thought something worse, but didn’t write it down. Which
thoughts are okay, and which aren’t? I'm just rambling in a Subway at a
Wal-Mart in Holly, Michigan right now.
Hit.
Who am I to judge a man by his supple and full chest?
Thepeopleofwalmart.com exists because the people at Wal-Mart seriously deserve
some sort of accolade. What the fuck else do they do? That wasn’t tactful, it
was just cruel. I'm just fucking bored. My time is being wasted. I’m still in
this god damn Subway. I don’t even think a foot-long of anything could
entertain me at this point. Annoyance festers and boils beneath the surface,
below my already toxic mind. Who better to silently take it out on than the
people of Wal-Mart.
An average day at Dandy Hill is boring as fuck. I think
limbo might be the equivalent of waiting at a table in Subway inside a Wal-Mart
for eternity. That sounds like just the right amount of punishment, without
going too far. Uncle Tony is sitting at the table across from me. He’s
mindlessly staring ahead eating some type of nut. His stare is so empty that it
causes me to draw a blank in my mind. Dandy Hill has helped me, why not him?
Instead of getting help constantly, as one should for several hundred dollars a
day, he spends a lot of time alone, drowning in his own self pity and
wickedness.
I can feel time
crawling backwards as my left foot starts to go numb from sitting here for
thirty minutes. Time may be the only real thing that matters sometimes. It’s
only been thirty minutes, but I swear it’s been longer. The little Wal-Mart
elves have been turning back the hands of time. This place is like a Casino,
you lose track of time in it; or at least that’s how it feels. I don't know.
We're leaving.
What is life but a series of events that kill time? That
statement is too grandiose for its own good, but I think it suits its purpose.
What would you do with all the time you had that you thought was wasted on
menial tasks? Would you really seize the moment and make the best you that you
could possibly be? I know what I did when I had nothing but time to kill. I
smoked weed and played video games until my mind folded inward on itself until
it was left an overlapped mess on unintelligible self pity. A series of paper
football folds constantly shrinking the paper smaller and smaller until you
can’t fold it in anymore. Until all that’s left is a stiff mess of crumbled
meaningless paper; something that once was more, but now is less. I think
sometimes it is necessary to have time wasted. It’s time to practice being in
the moment, to learn to be okay with self and the absence of outside stimulus.
That being said, I still hated being stuck at Wal-Mart each week.
Hit.
That's a pretty average Thursday evening for me. We used to
play poker with cigarettes on Thursdays, but we stopped when Blake left. Blake
was a petite adorable little man. Thursday is where I learned I am a betting
man of literal sorts.
Chronic Bitching
I
work two days a week now at nonprofit charity now. The place is for
impoverished people, and the homeless. They supply food, clothing, and so many
other things for people who can't afford it. From my section they get men’s
clothing. They get 3 outfits, or 3 shirts or sweaters, 1 pair of jeans or
khakis, 2 pairs of slacks, or 1 pair of slacks and a suit. Also a pair of
shoes, socks, boxers, and 2 rolled up t-shirts. Best volunteer site I've been
too. It's pretty cool. They let me pick out some clothes. I got a few new
crewnecks and a dope Tommy Hilfiger flannel. I basically fold clothes for five
hours while I listen to music, and occasionally books on tape. Last week I
finished 1984, this week I’m starting The Chamber of Secrets.
Every now and then a client comes in; they pick out some clothes, and leave.
Sometimes they’re difficult, others they aren’t.
One of the farms
I was at was pure horseshit, literally. We picked up horseshit for three hours
and then left, nothing more, nothing less. Another farm I volunteered at I was
on my hands and knees for three hours planting brussels sprouts. I planted around
635 seedlings.
The
Dandy Hill farm is a variety of shit. Everything from cleaning up ammonia laced
piss pens, to building a gazebo for the donkeys and goats.
The animal shelter was easy, you just walk dogs. But I
fucking hate walking dogs. I walked dogs for a friend's company a few weeks
before I tried to kill myself. Walking dogs literally reminds me of killing
myself. I got a good bit out of volunteering, but I still maintain that free
labor is bullshit. I would rather get paid for my time. I’m sure I’ll volunteer
again at some point in my life
“Can I get a visual on Kayla?”
Kayla was in the cafeteria licking the tables
Avoiding DAA
I'm reading a book by Albert Camus. If I were to live my
life like the main character of this book I wouldn’t give a shit about anyone,
and I’d live for the absurd. I think I’ve achieved that to some degree, except
I noticeably care now more than ever.
I can see the
fountain in the courtyard from my lounge chair. I come here every now and then
when I don't want to go with the gang somewhere.
I usually nap in
the chair three seats to the right of me. The chairs are an off white leather,
and don’t stick to you when you sweat, I’m not sure how that’s possible, but
I’ve never noticed it; they're quite cozy. I'm not sleeping today. I've got
another hour and thirty one minutes here to read or write. The man to the left
of me won’t stop making noise. He has an off white colored beard, and a walker.
I’ve seen him around before, but he was always silent. Right now he won’t shut
the hell up. A lot of people here float through the hallways. We all float down
here. Thorazine shuffle.
For 5 months now, this one resident has been constantly
introducing himself to me. He always has a lost look on his face, and always
says to me in a slow soft drone
“Hi my name is Steve, what’s your name again?”
“Justin.” I reply,
“Oh.” He says before shuffling off.
His names not
really Steve; after 5 months of constantly being introduced to the same guy, I
can’t remember his name, but not the same way that he doesn’t remember mine.
Baker Blues
I
used to call Jordan every night for the first two months or so, maybe three, I
don’t remember. I never said, “Goodnight moon” to her, but in hindsight I wish
I did. It was something I would say to her a lot back when I first started
dealing with all this stuff. That doesn’t mean anything to you, but it would
have been a nice touch for her.
It's been a long
hundred some days. At first days were so long. I'd lie in bed after the first
few hours of the day, eyes closed, focusing on every single task done up until
that point throughout the day. I'd recall every detail of the day from what I
ate for breakfast to how many scoops of shit I shoveled at the farm.
I did that for a
few weeks in between programming until I’d fall asleep. I’d dream of a life
left home. I fought time at first. I wanted it to end more than I want to get
something out of it. 5 days passed, 2 weeks passed, a month, 2 months, nothing
changed for a while, but time stacked up. I've enjoyed my time here, but time
hasn't been conventional here. Time stopped moving the way it once did, it
flows differently now. It feels like it was yesterday when I was telling a
coworker I wouldn’t be home for good until September. It's September now and
I'm still not home; three more weeks until my departure. Michigan summers are
nice, but Michigan is alright at best. The summer days here are quite long. The
state itself is right before a time zone switch. This means the days do stretch
just a bit further than most of the days do on the east coast. I feel like The
Stranger by Camus says something about time stagnation better than I ever
could:
"I hadn't understood how days could be both long and
short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they
ended up flowing into one another."
After the first
two months, I began to submit to the program. Time stopped meaning anything, it
just went. The weeks started to speed by. The only reason the days of the week
mattered were because of what programming we had on each day, again a quote from
The Stranger seems relevant
"They lost
their names. Only the words" yesterday" and "tomorrow"
still had any meaning for me."
I gained a good
bit of weight the first few months, but I've shed a lot since then. It's been 5
months now, a week away from 6. I don't find myself lying on the floor thinking
as often as I once did. I used to spend a lot of my life lying on the floors of
various rooms thinking, hoping that somehow lightning would strike and change
everything. I've become the change. Never stop moving. Never stop growing.
Don't stagnate, flow constantly. As Milo would say:
“Flourish in the lag time”
Sunrise Angel: Page Unavailable
I
was waiting in line to sign up for new groups today when I started talk to the
man in front of me. We had been acquainted, but I wouldn’t call us friends. I
told him I was leaving in almost two weeks and I thought signing up for a group
was pointless. He looked surprised, almost shocked at the idea of me leaving.
It made me think that maybe he was surprised I was leaving before him. A lot of
thoughts raced through my mind as a result of his body language and facial
movements, but he asked if I was ready to go. I told him yes, but what I wanted
to say was that I was never that fucked up to begin with. I think the key lies
there, I was never that fucked up to begin with. That seemed rude to say
though, I bit my tongue.
Anonymous Asshole
It's funny how important AA has become. When I first got
here, I fucking hated it. I actually started taking notes during it. I titled
the notes "Assholes Anonymous." I’d write down every little detail
that annoyed me in the meetings. From the woman with a shirt the read “Fuck
Heroin” apologizing for saying shit, to the guy with a gut wearing a spandex
under armor shirt like it was still 2007. Or other things, like the man named
Happy introducing himself as “Hi I’m Happy I’m an addict”. The comma in his intro
is vital, but he never paused as if it were there. Maybe he was making a point;
it still bothered me. There was a lot to annoy you if you look for it, but the
point is not to. The point is to let go and love, despite flaws big or small.
Allow no half measures. The other week a transgender woman in an AA meeting
told the meeting that "You can't change yourself when you’re born. You're
born the way you are, and that's that". I found that kind of ironic. She
meant that we were born alcoholics, and we were bound to that for life. All I
could think was that she was born biologically a man, but mentally a woman; she
changed who she was from birth in a way, so what the fuck was she talking
about. Just thought that was ironic I guess, but I get what she meant. I’m not
quite sure if that’s offensive or not, but if I have to wonder that, maybe it
is? I don’t think it matters. She's actually quite entertaining. She has this
on point dead pan humor; she just made me laugh at the hypocrisy of her AA
speech, but I don’t think that matters anymore.
The Twelve-Step
program has been a vital part of recovery here in Hell, Michigan, I mean Holly.
Holy Holly
I remember being at
the bar one night before I got here, we were a few drinks deep and we joked
about me coming back having found God. Well, I've found a higher power, but
it's more like a universal awareness type thing than an almighty God. It’s the
belief that all living things are intertwined with other living things. That
there are patterns and good energies abound in the world, and they key to all
of it is just to seek them and follow their flow. Flow is the key. I think I’ve
combined a handful of Taoist, Buddhist, and Agnostic ideas and beliefs into one
little spiritual gumbo. My "higher power" is the universe. I didn’t
find “God”, but I molded beliefs I felt into something more tasty and
palatable.
I decided that life is a game of sorts. Art imitates life,
and life imitates art. At this point, games mirror life, and in turn, to me at
least, life mirrors games. Games are undoubtedly art, and as time goes they
continue to mirror life in more and more ways. I just spent three hours fishing
and cooking in a video game, bare with me, that is a pretty life like game, to
some extent. If life is a game, if life mirrors art, why not live life like it
is a game? When you get mad or upset with a video game, your first reaction
isn’t to get mad at the developers, and demand to speak with them, to pray that
they change the game, you just play the game; you accept the games world for
what it is. I’m aware that these comparisons aren’t entirely sound and holes
can be easily punched through this, but humor me for a bit longer, I like to
think this makes sense. If life is a game, why look for god? To me it doesn’t
matter if there is or isn’t a god, it’s a moot point; A question that can never
be answered. The only thing that matters is the universe of a game, not the
creator. This entire thought process is why my “higher power” is the universe
and the connection, patterns, and flow within it. I’ll play the game of life
according to the rules set within the universe. No longer will I seek out the
game developers and demand that they give me hacks to cheat my way through the
game. When you play a game, nothing matters but the rules within the world of
the game. It just seemed like sound belief to me.
When This Ends, at Least I’ll Have a Reason to Live
I leave Dandy Hill six days from now. I was scared shitless
the last few days. I was sitting on the toilet after a long nap the other day,
just ruminating over what could happen when I get home. What happens if the
changes don’t stick, if I fail, if I remain broken, all the what ifs that could
come with my return. I grew angry and scared. I was pooping when all these
emotions boiled up to the surface and overwhelmed me. I punched the wall in
front of me while on the toilet, denting the wall, and subsequently squeezed
out a little nugget of poop. I like to think those releases are somehow
connected. I wasn’t being mindful. I was lost in my mind, and so far from the
present. Since then I have been more mindful than I have ever been. Nothing
matters but the present, unless in crisis, or any other specific circumstance,
I have no reason not to be mindful. I’m bright enough to be able to fully
function mindfully. I can regulate every emotion and motor controls throughout
my body without having to think about it beforehand. I can make decisions and
speak to people without having to analyze ever single word and situation
surrounding me. Truly being consistently mindful is a lifelong process, and for
someone who has spent a decade lost in his mind, I’ve got a stretch of road
ahead of me. I am ready to go home, and this place has allowed me to do that. A
lot of what I have written has shed a negative light on Dandy Hill, but the
program sucks. What it has done, has given me the tools to use at my own
disposal. No one here has helped me but myself. Staff has help guide my
thoughts, but ultimately I was the one making all the changes within myself.
They taught me DBT skills to regulate thoughts and emotions, but I was the one
to put them to use. This place does not fix people. It provides you with a
seemingly endless amount of time for you to work on yourself. You can fight it
all you want, but in the end you will be the one to make changes in yourself,
only you, no one else can fix you. Dandy Hill has been annoying as fuck, but it
has all been necessary. Everything that has happened had to happen. It’s time
to go home.
“Can I get a visual on Kayla?”
Kayla was seen walking on the dirt road off campus
heading towards the highway
BLOG 22
“Today I thought about killing you”
I work in a series of group home for predominately
schizoaffective people. I’ve spent the last six years of my life in and out of
hospitals, doctor’s offices, and even a residential facility trying to aid me
in my endeavor of stability. I don’t have a hard life by any means, I had some
trauma as a child, divorced parents, moderate anxiety, but nothing to warrant
the way I act now. I am a fail son, or at least that’s how I feel. I’ve cried
on more days this year than I have any other year in my entire life. I punched
my best friend in the face; I tried to kill myself two weeks ago, I don’t know
why I can’t grasp the basic guidelines of adult life. Where am I going wrong? I
work in a place where I’m consistently putting on a happy face and giving
advice to people who are handicapped by their mental illnesses, where as with
mine, I’m fully functional. I am never manic and not even really depressed. I
generally sleep 12-13 hours a day, but I don’t think it’s out of depression, I
just am so lazy that I don’t want to get out of bed, or that’s what I lead
myself to believe.
Waking up is like going from a purely blissful state of
being and then being thrust into ice cold water full of emotion and outliers
you have no control over. In reality you have absolute control of your
reactions to the world, there is just the illusion you create that you have no
control. When I take showers I often find myself turning the nozzle to make it
as cold as possible to prepare myself for abrupt states of change, but it still
doesn’t help me wake up earlier, nothing does. Working 4 to 12 isn’t good for
the lazy, but I’m not entirely sure if my routine is based out of laziness or
depression. My job bounces between helping and taking care of people, to
extremely long periods of playing runescape and reading books. Sometimes I’ll
have weeks where I do nothing at all at work, I basically just get paid to sit
and read, which I’m obviously okay with I guess, but at the same time it sucks.
I have no purpose aside of living for the sake of it, no deep passion, no deep
intent. I don’t place enough worth in the relationships I have with others and
that puts me at fault, because life is all about relationships. I have a long
term girlfriend, friends, and a loving family, all of which I throw away by the
way I treat myself. A huge culprit in double think, I want to be alone as much
as I don’t want to be alone, there is no balance. It feels like my world has
been on hold my entire life, like I’ve just been standing by on hold listening
to elevator music and toying around with whatever is in the room while I wait
to get through to the person on the other line.
Sometimes I have bad days or even bad weeks, but they always
bounce back, but they don’t matter anymore. I’ve been doing this for so long
that I know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, it’s just a matter of
doing it. I either need to put down the fucking phone because I’m holding for
something that’s long gone, or I need to start smashing buttons until I get
through to an operator.
7-8 hours of sleep
exercise
purpose
read
work
purpose
purpose
relationships
healthy food
don’t imbibe negative things
meditate
purpose
exercise
purpose
R.I.P Brandon Gibbs
BLOG 23
The mind is like a muscle, you have to exercise it, otherwise else it will remain weak. This can be applied to the intellectual realm as well as the mental health realm. I’ve had a weird year so far. Almost a year ago I returned from a 6 month experience in a small town in Michigan. I learned how to be happy in a stress free environment, an environment that was entirely detached from the life I created up until that point in time. Upon my return home, stress was introduced, and I drowned. I’ve been through three jobs, depression, paranoia, a suicide attempt, a forced hospitalization, and now I’m experiencing happiness. I stopped doing this blog because I didn’t like writing about myself and my problems. I stopped because I felt I had run out of things to offer. The mind is a muscle, and if you don’t exercise it, it gets weak. Those who suffer, in turn become the strongest. You can meditate, exercise, eat healthy, and remain sober, but if you aren’t maintaining the right mental exercising or chemical balance, you will continue to suffer. That’s very preachy of me to say, but that is the conclusion I’ve come to understand. I was finally put on an antidepressant for the first time in ten years, and I feel alive again. I can look in the mirror and not feel disgust, I can read and enjoy it, I want to do so much, and I want to live. My dreams have been filled with the people of my past, I’ve been processing all my past experiences and actions, and reflecting on the now. There is a difference between working out the mind, and drowning in it. You can swim throughout your thoughts, but you do reach a point when you are no longer swimming and you’re drowning. Generally this is referred to as ruminating. I lay awake every night in bed for 1-2 hours ruminating over everything about my day and my actions in the hopes that I will find an answer to a question I have either not asked, or don’t need to have answered. Many times we look for answers to questions that don’t need answered. The answers to our world are often times right in front of us, we simply need to understand, but that takes a lot of work. Exploring the mind is a double edged sword, it’s as dangerous as it is beneficial, and often I find that I am at my most peaceful when I am not exploring it. I have done enough work in understanding myself that often I just need to experience the moment, for the moment is the only thing that’s ever happening to us. It is important to understand the distinction of exercising the mind, and dwelling on it. Beating yourself up and focusing on the extreme negativity that is so easy to feed yourself, is dwelling. Thinking over and over again about an experience that could have gone differently, focusing on changing the now, wanting to change a feeling, is dwelling. You should not change your feelings, trying to change a feeling is not a positive exercise, a feeling is a feeling for a reason. Sit with your feelings, understand them, but don’t hang onto the thoughts that are tied to them if the feeling is negative. The exercise that comes with sitting with the negative feelings is understand that its okay to feel scared, lost, unhappy, and just in general, bad. You can sit with a feeling and not drown in it. Once you are okay with feeling how you feel, you begin to train your mind in being okay with negative feelings and being active in experience them and being one with them instead of reactive and feeding into them. Express the feelings, feel the feelings, don’t try and change them, they are what they are for a reason. If you need medication, therapy, whatever you need to be okay with understanding and sitting with feelings, do it, they are there for a reason. I learned that when I focus on trying to change a feeling, I drown in it. Go read a book, books are a wondrous gift to mankind and there are hundreds of years worth of information at the tips of our fingers just waiting for us to explore them and aid us in our journey in life. After I tried to kill myself this year I decided I was never going to try again, I got out of the hospital and went back to life as I lived it before I attempted. I continued to cry almost every night before bed, at work, and in my car. I started to fantasize every night about hanging myself on tree outback because you really can’t fail when you hang yourself, once it’s done, it’s done. I’ve cried more this year, than every other year of my life combined. This year I’ve been experiencing my feelings instead of running from them. It’s been a fucking bitch, it’s been hard, it’s been too much, but now it’s okay. I’m going to start writing again, I have a short story I want to write about three doors. Each door has a Latin word on it. One is for heaven, hell, and life. I’m going to explore three philosophies behind each door, hell will follow nihilistic views and absurdism, life will follow Taoism, and heaven will explore philosophy in some sort of general terms, the kingdom of heaven will reside within the explorer itself. I read the book Dune and I fucking loved it, I read Jitterbug Perfume and it opened my eyes to the beauty or mortality and the horror of immortality. I’m reading a book that’s basically a discussion with the mythologist Joseph Campbell and after that I’m going to read Moby Dick. I’m going to practice learning to fucking structure a sentence and how to manipulate words through proper grammar and punctionation. I bought a skateboard so I could make myself active outside of the gym, and in turn meet new people. I am ready to live life, but it all came through chemical balance, working the mind, and learning to let feelings be feelings. This post is all over the place, but I’ve got a family dinner right now and I just wanted to write before I left. I’m not going to read it over, I’m just going to post it. Ideally this was helpful in some way. Go read Dune.
THE END
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