“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”- Sylvia Plath
Sunday, July 08, 2012
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Saturday Video
Ain't nothing like the real thing.
Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.
Ain't nothing like the real thing.
I got your picture hangin' on the wall,
But it can't see or come to me when I call your name.
I realize it's just a picture inside a frame.
I read your letters when you're not near me,
But they don't move me, and they don't groove me
Like when I hear your sweet voice whispering in my ear.
I play my game, a fantasy.
I pretend I'm not in reality.
I need the shelter of your arms to comfort me.
No other sound is quite the same as your name.
No touch can do half as much to make me feel better,
So let's stay together.
I got some memories to look back on
And though they help me when you're gone,
I'm well aware nothin' can take the place of you being there.
I pretend I'm not in reality.
I need the shelter of your arms to comfort me.
No other sound is quite the same as your name.
No touch can do half as much to make me feel better,
So let's stay together.
I got some memories to look back on
And though they help me when you're gone,
I'm well aware nothin' can take the place of you being there.
No other sound is quite the same as your name.
No touch can do half as much
To make me feel better
So, let's stay together
So glad we got the real thing, baby.
So glad we got the the real thing.
So glad we got the real thing, baby.
So glad we got the real thing.
Friday, July 06, 2012
Planet Telex
You can force it but it will not come
You can taste it but it will not form
You can crush it but it's always here
You can crush it but it's always near
Chasing you home
Saying, everything is broken
Everyone is broken
You can force it but it will stay stung
You can crush it as dry as a bone
You can walk it home straight from school
You can kiss it, you can break all the rules
But still, everything is broken
Everyone is broken
Everyone is, everyone is broken
Everyone is, everything is broken
Why can't you forget?
Why can't you forget?
Why can't you forget?
Thursday, July 05, 2012
The Worst
Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball
______________________
The Worst
Suicide only becomes an option when depression persists for a long time. I’ve been reading narratives of bipolar individuals in acute states of paralysis for years, ever since I was formally diagnosed myself. Even so, the most concise written account of the harrowing process I’ve ever encountered would seem to be a very obvious one. I first stumbled across it while experiencing some serious high school emotional turbulence. Far from making me more depressed, the novel made me feel understood instead.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath won its reputation for its frank depiction of the slowly debilitating depression present within a talented young adult. Those who saw me take a similar plunge could have predicted where I’d end up by studying the text. Like Esther Greenwood, I observed, with paralytic and weary horror the result of prolonged depression. I experienced how effectively all the energy and vitality of my life was sadistically removed, inch by inch. By the end, going through with killing yourself reaches paradoxical proportions. It is a way to regain life by casting one’s lot with the afterlife.
No longer believing that life would be pleasurable again, choice had been completely removed. I was left no personal agency. People around me kept telling me to hold on, to keep fighting. Those who did not understand the illness tried to guilt me into not going through with it. Suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. I must have heard that a thousand times from a thousand different people.
This line of logic assumed that I’d maybe just not thought the matter through--or that I hadn’t thought of it a particular way. To be willing to sacrifice one’s very earthly existence, a state of being that is a biological compulsion and imperative is a decision few arrive at impulsively or without severe contemplation. Forcing oneself to the brink takes extreme effort. The nature of the illness leaves one weak, disoriented, discouraged. Formulating a plan and then making sure it succeeds is laborious.
I invited, then courted the possibility of death by my own hand because it gave me an incentive. It restored a glimmer of hope, of possibility. When even taking a shower and eating grows difficult, one sees nothing resembling a conclusion to these feelings. In life, we’re driven by strongly felt, strongly actualized goals and aspirations. Depression removes the prospect of future life plans. The throbbing psychological and physical pain grinds a person down to nothing. It persists day after day, often with no relief to be found or anticipated.
Reassurance, even from sympathetic voices is mostly ineffective. Though it might be a little like building a bridge over the river Kwai, suicide is the final valiant thrust. If sickness is a battle between will and resolve, the last bombastic volley can be seen as the desire to be or not to be. Dying unifies muddled thoughts into a grand final ambition, a comprehensible, motivating solution to end the pain. Those who have not fallen into this quicksand themselves do not fully understand.
The series of attempts all run together these days. My father took it upon himself to keep me alive. He was my primary caretaker for a two or three year period. It was fortunate this hell only persisted for two or three years. I doubt anyone, myself included, could have made it beyond that. But while in the middle of it, there seemed to be no way out for anyone.
Once, while in his company, I sought to jump out the window of my bedroom. Dad grabbed me at the last minute. He was stronger and larger than me; he trapped me underneath the weight of his body. The backyard was a ravine that, sloping steadily downhill, ended at a small creek. Had I succeeded, I would have suffered broken bones and lacerations, but I would not have died. The elevation wasn’t sufficient enough to accomplish my purpose.
My internet friends were concerned. I’d since been befriended by a girl my age who lived in the UK, in London. For a time, we carried on an improbable relationship, one separated by a great distance. She was someone who I couldn’t visit by car. A trip would cost hundred of dollars I didn’t have. She worked at an off-license (liquor store) and went to school full-time. Expecting her on these shores was simply a dream.
The entire relationship was unrealistic, stuck together by a cloying sense of melodrama. But I did find an unforeseen source of strength and healing. The girl’s mother, in accordance with her Christian faith, listened to my insecurities every day over the phone. Her resolve to help me must have been intense, because most people would have given up and ceased communication altogether. I am thankful for the guidance and advice of that calm voice.
______________________
The Worst
Suicide only becomes an option when depression persists for a long time. I’ve been reading narratives of bipolar individuals in acute states of paralysis for years, ever since I was formally diagnosed myself. Even so, the most concise written account of the harrowing process I’ve ever encountered would seem to be a very obvious one. I first stumbled across it while experiencing some serious high school emotional turbulence. Far from making me more depressed, the novel made me feel understood instead.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath won its reputation for its frank depiction of the slowly debilitating depression present within a talented young adult. Those who saw me take a similar plunge could have predicted where I’d end up by studying the text. Like Esther Greenwood, I observed, with paralytic and weary horror the result of prolonged depression. I experienced how effectively all the energy and vitality of my life was sadistically removed, inch by inch. By the end, going through with killing yourself reaches paradoxical proportions. It is a way to regain life by casting one’s lot with the afterlife.
No longer believing that life would be pleasurable again, choice had been completely removed. I was left no personal agency. People around me kept telling me to hold on, to keep fighting. Those who did not understand the illness tried to guilt me into not going through with it. Suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. I must have heard that a thousand times from a thousand different people.
This line of logic assumed that I’d maybe just not thought the matter through--or that I hadn’t thought of it a particular way. To be willing to sacrifice one’s very earthly existence, a state of being that is a biological compulsion and imperative is a decision few arrive at impulsively or without severe contemplation. Forcing oneself to the brink takes extreme effort. The nature of the illness leaves one weak, disoriented, discouraged. Formulating a plan and then making sure it succeeds is laborious.
I invited, then courted the possibility of death by my own hand because it gave me an incentive. It restored a glimmer of hope, of possibility. When even taking a shower and eating grows difficult, one sees nothing resembling a conclusion to these feelings. In life, we’re driven by strongly felt, strongly actualized goals and aspirations. Depression removes the prospect of future life plans. The throbbing psychological and physical pain grinds a person down to nothing. It persists day after day, often with no relief to be found or anticipated.
Reassurance, even from sympathetic voices is mostly ineffective. Though it might be a little like building a bridge over the river Kwai, suicide is the final valiant thrust. If sickness is a battle between will and resolve, the last bombastic volley can be seen as the desire to be or not to be. Dying unifies muddled thoughts into a grand final ambition, a comprehensible, motivating solution to end the pain. Those who have not fallen into this quicksand themselves do not fully understand.
The series of attempts all run together these days. My father took it upon himself to keep me alive. He was my primary caretaker for a two or three year period. It was fortunate this hell only persisted for two or three years. I doubt anyone, myself included, could have made it beyond that. But while in the middle of it, there seemed to be no way out for anyone.
Once, while in his company, I sought to jump out the window of my bedroom. Dad grabbed me at the last minute. He was stronger and larger than me; he trapped me underneath the weight of his body. The backyard was a ravine that, sloping steadily downhill, ended at a small creek. Had I succeeded, I would have suffered broken bones and lacerations, but I would not have died. The elevation wasn’t sufficient enough to accomplish my purpose.
My internet friends were concerned. I’d since been befriended by a girl my age who lived in the UK, in London. For a time, we carried on an improbable relationship, one separated by a great distance. She was someone who I couldn’t visit by car. A trip would cost hundred of dollars I didn’t have. She worked at an off-license (liquor store) and went to school full-time. Expecting her on these shores was simply a dream.
The entire relationship was unrealistic, stuck together by a cloying sense of melodrama. But I did find an unforeseen source of strength and healing. The girl’s mother, in accordance with her Christian faith, listened to my insecurities every day over the phone. Her resolve to help me must have been intense, because most people would have given up and ceased communication altogether. I am thankful for the guidance and advice of that calm voice.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Happy Independence Day!
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Weather Damage and Cultural Shortcomings
The derecho of Friday night ripped through town without any warning. A tropical system by any other name in its behavior, it raged through the area for ninety full minutes. I retired for bed that night around 10 pm, observing shortly before I nodded off what I estimated to be 70 mph wind gusts. Though I knew the squall was intense, I had no idea of the ferocity of the storm. In this part of town, power lines are underground and trees are far less commonplace. Even during the insanity of back to back blizzards in early 2009, I never lost power.
In Washington, DC, a dynamic has developed over time. Young professionals have, of late, congregated inside the District of Columbia. A city with a high cost of living, it makes much more sense to live within the reach of public transportation. A car adds additional expense, including parking fees, car payments, insurance, and gas. Few of us are starving, but most of us are unable to put much back in savings. These are dynamics even more in evidence because of the still-sluggish economy. These bad times have fallen disproportionately upon young adults.
A house on a shady, tree-lined suburban street seems to be the middle class Washingtonian dream. One crucial caveat: it ain’t cheap. Where one lives is often a status symbol, proof one has reached some larger goal, now having the satisfaction of having come into one’s own. Only a few blocks from me is a historic residential area named Cleveland Park. Many of the houses date back to the Gilded Age of the 1880’s and 1890’s. These residences cost several million dollars apiece and are only within the financial reach of a privileged few.
The complex of storms that erupted late last week was fueled by abnormally hot conditions. That night, the evening high temperature was 82. In weather terms, this reading is only courting danger, especially in summer. Ancient deciduous trees shed significantly heavy branches because of high winds, taking down power lines with them. The aftermath of this storm has often fallen heaviest on those who live out of downtown, in adjacent areas of Maryland and Virginia.
In some ways, the Washington, DC, metro area is divided into two distinct regions, based on cultural identification and, with that, stated life goals. Before the riots in 1968 that followed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, many whites lived in the District. Following the violence of that event, white flight took hold and continued for decades.
Caucasians began to stream south into northern Virginia, or north into Maryland. Until gentrification took hold in the 1990’s, Washington, DC, was once the murder capital of the nation. Large swaths of the District became impoverished. Parts of town were utterly obliterated by the crack epidemic. Some have never recovered. These sections have been hit by a series of natural disasters over time, not just one or two every now and then.
Times have changed. Most people I know live in urban settings. Few lost their power Friday night. It’s a curious reversal from the way things usually are, when those with the means to afford a multi-bedroom, multiple square foot house have a decided advantage. A white picket fence splinters remarkably easily under the right conditions. Many people are still without the means to keep themselves cool, I recognize, which can be life-threatening in this Hades.
The aesthetics and logic of shade, greenery, and well-maintained property can become lethal, especially for the elderly and disabled. The automobile used to shuttle children back and forth to school, and to the grocery store can be smashed and helplessly pinned against the weight of a tree branch. This is what I discovered yesterday while walking through an afflicted part of town.
I find it a sort of poetic justice. The desire to isolate from one’s peers can backfire spectacularly. Power crews struggle to reach another person's castle and moat, an attempt at “privacy". The American Dream isn't much without the innovations upon which it depends. Alienation is a life without electricity, estranged from the rest of civilization.
There are lessons to be learned here. Houses of worship have opened their doors to those who need a cool place to sleep or to recharge. This is a highly appropriate gesture but crisis alone is a poor reason for philanthropy. Many are still without power and may be without it the rest of the week. It should not take a genuine state of emergency before we extend basic outreach and hospitality to others. The self-assigned hectic pace of DC residents has been disrupted, but all is not lost. Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
Rugged individuals can be their own jailors with disturbing ease. We’ve built beautiful cages for ourselves, never seriously questioning why. We say we tolerate others, so long as they don’t move next door. Yet, it is facile to suggest that racial prejudice alone fed suburban growth. People often follow existing trends and do not question the long-term consequences. A self-critical streak might do us a world of good.
Meanwhile, here in DC, what has already been a blistering summer continues. The difference between 95 degree and 100 degree heat is negligible. By Saturday, we’ll be back close to the century mark with the peak of the daytime sauna. I wonder if people will take this opportunity to reconsider their priorities. Sometimes trying to keep up appearances is more trouble than it’s worth. What are we really trying to escape?
A house on a shady, tree-lined suburban street seems to be the middle class Washingtonian dream. One crucial caveat: it ain’t cheap. Where one lives is often a status symbol, proof one has reached some larger goal, now having the satisfaction of having come into one’s own. Only a few blocks from me is a historic residential area named Cleveland Park. Many of the houses date back to the Gilded Age of the 1880’s and 1890’s. These residences cost several million dollars apiece and are only within the financial reach of a privileged few.
The complex of storms that erupted late last week was fueled by abnormally hot conditions. That night, the evening high temperature was 82. In weather terms, this reading is only courting danger, especially in summer. Ancient deciduous trees shed significantly heavy branches because of high winds, taking down power lines with them. The aftermath of this storm has often fallen heaviest on those who live out of downtown, in adjacent areas of Maryland and Virginia.
In some ways, the Washington, DC, metro area is divided into two distinct regions, based on cultural identification and, with that, stated life goals. Before the riots in 1968 that followed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, many whites lived in the District. Following the violence of that event, white flight took hold and continued for decades.
Caucasians began to stream south into northern Virginia, or north into Maryland. Until gentrification took hold in the 1990’s, Washington, DC, was once the murder capital of the nation. Large swaths of the District became impoverished. Parts of town were utterly obliterated by the crack epidemic. Some have never recovered. These sections have been hit by a series of natural disasters over time, not just one or two every now and then.
Times have changed. Most people I know live in urban settings. Few lost their power Friday night. It’s a curious reversal from the way things usually are, when those with the means to afford a multi-bedroom, multiple square foot house have a decided advantage. A white picket fence splinters remarkably easily under the right conditions. Many people are still without the means to keep themselves cool, I recognize, which can be life-threatening in this Hades.
The aesthetics and logic of shade, greenery, and well-maintained property can become lethal, especially for the elderly and disabled. The automobile used to shuttle children back and forth to school, and to the grocery store can be smashed and helplessly pinned against the weight of a tree branch. This is what I discovered yesterday while walking through an afflicted part of town.
I find it a sort of poetic justice. The desire to isolate from one’s peers can backfire spectacularly. Power crews struggle to reach another person's castle and moat, an attempt at “privacy". The American Dream isn't much without the innovations upon which it depends. Alienation is a life without electricity, estranged from the rest of civilization.
There are lessons to be learned here. Houses of worship have opened their doors to those who need a cool place to sleep or to recharge. This is a highly appropriate gesture but crisis alone is a poor reason for philanthropy. Many are still without power and may be without it the rest of the week. It should not take a genuine state of emergency before we extend basic outreach and hospitality to others. The self-assigned hectic pace of DC residents has been disrupted, but all is not lost. Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
Rugged individuals can be their own jailors with disturbing ease. We’ve built beautiful cages for ourselves, never seriously questioning why. We say we tolerate others, so long as they don’t move next door. Yet, it is facile to suggest that racial prejudice alone fed suburban growth. People often follow existing trends and do not question the long-term consequences. A self-critical streak might do us a world of good.
Meanwhile, here in DC, what has already been a blistering summer continues. The difference between 95 degree and 100 degree heat is negligible. By Saturday, we’ll be back close to the century mark with the peak of the daytime sauna. I wonder if people will take this opportunity to reconsider their priorities. Sometimes trying to keep up appearances is more trouble than it’s worth. What are we really trying to escape?
Monday, July 02, 2012
Don't Be Cruel
You know I can be found,
sitting home all alone,
If you can't come around,
at least please telephone.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
Baby, if I made you mad
for something I might have said,
Please, let's forget the past,
the future looks bright ahead,
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
I don't want no other love,
Baby, it's just you I'm thinking of.
Don't stop thinking of me,
don't make me feel this way,
Come on over here and love me,
you know what I want you to say.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
Why should we be apart?
I really love you baby, cross my heart.
Let's walk up to the preacher
and let us say I do,
Then you'll know you'll have me,
and I'll know that I'll have you,
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
I don't want no other love,
Baby, it's just you I'm thinking of.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
I don't want no other love,
Baby, it's just you I'm thinking of.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Me and Everybody's on the Sad Same Team
An excerpt of a longer chapter.
__________
Me and Everybody’s on the Same Sad Team
When hypomanic (in the beginning) or manic (after I turned twenty), I often went on rescue missions. The intensity of mania increases gradually with time. Each episode ups the ante a little bit more. Behavior grows more and more outlandish. The illness overtook me, and I no longer had any control over my thoughts and how I must have come across to other people. After a time, I believed that others, those in whom I was interested, specifically, needed to be saved from their unfortunate lot in life. All of this was pure delusion on my part, wildly untrue, but at my worst, I believed it.
The first place I traveled was southern Illinois. Earlier in the summer, while working with a church youth group to build a house for a poor family, I came across a girl my age. She was part of another church group visiting my city for the same purpose. I was lucky to find someone so similar to myself. We were both in the right place at the right time. All the metrics were perfect, metrics that would not exist at other times. Both of us were lonely, intelligent, and felt generally isolated from the rest of our peers.
We spent most of a day painting a house together. The attraction was immediate. By the end of our time together everyone noted, in sweetly mocking fashion, how enamored we clearly were with each other. In the back of a car, before we were to physically part ways, the two of us exchanged e-mail addresses. Easily attainable personal e-mail was a relatively new concept back then, one that young people adopted first, as is always the case.
Though I often doubt my abilities, I have observed over time that I’ve been remarkably successful in achieving female attention. Not only that, I reflect that several ex-girlfriends have sought to keep in contact with me, even eons after we’d long since parted ways. This current girl of my infatuations simply would not let me drift away. When we completely lost track of each other, a year later or thereabouts, she asked her new boyfriend, skilled at computers, to find my updated contact information.
__________
Me and Everybody’s on the Same Sad Team
When hypomanic (in the beginning) or manic (after I turned twenty), I often went on rescue missions. The intensity of mania increases gradually with time. Each episode ups the ante a little bit more. Behavior grows more and more outlandish. The illness overtook me, and I no longer had any control over my thoughts and how I must have come across to other people. After a time, I believed that others, those in whom I was interested, specifically, needed to be saved from their unfortunate lot in life. All of this was pure delusion on my part, wildly untrue, but at my worst, I believed it.
The first place I traveled was southern Illinois. Earlier in the summer, while working with a church youth group to build a house for a poor family, I came across a girl my age. She was part of another church group visiting my city for the same purpose. I was lucky to find someone so similar to myself. We were both in the right place at the right time. All the metrics were perfect, metrics that would not exist at other times. Both of us were lonely, intelligent, and felt generally isolated from the rest of our peers.
We spent most of a day painting a house together. The attraction was immediate. By the end of our time together everyone noted, in sweetly mocking fashion, how enamored we clearly were with each other. In the back of a car, before we were to physically part ways, the two of us exchanged e-mail addresses. Easily attainable personal e-mail was a relatively new concept back then, one that young people adopted first, as is always the case.
Though I often doubt my abilities, I have observed over time that I’ve been remarkably successful in achieving female attention. Not only that, I reflect that several ex-girlfriends have sought to keep in contact with me, even eons after we’d long since parted ways. This current girl of my infatuations simply would not let me drift away. When we completely lost track of each other, a year later or thereabouts, she asked her new boyfriend, skilled at computers, to find my updated contact information.
He obliged and we resumed correspondence. But that was later. For the moment, we carried on an internet romance, a state of affairs which before long was roundly parodied and soundly criticized. How interesting today that once, in the mid-1990’s, finding someone to date online was considered a sign of atrocious social skills, a badge of shame, and a practice reeking of thinly concealed desperation. Now, online dating is a multimillion (if not billion) dollar industry and the average person thinks the practice is completely normal.
Before fifty-year-olds were hooking up on the Internet, high school and middle school students were online first, linking up with kids their own age. The appeal, in part, arrived in the form of immediacy and instant gratification. This distinguished the practice from letter correspondence by mail, a more traditional “pen pal” relationship. The distance that separated us might be vast, but after school or on weekends, this other person, whoever it was, was always there.
We talked online through instant chat, e-mail, and often over the phone. She was the first of many to come. Due to the age and the transient nature of the medium, these relationships rarely stood the test of time. However, when girls close nearby were not available to me because of a sometimes paralyzing sense of anxiety, also part of my illness, I settled for what I could get. And, truthfully, I have since gathered that I was only one of several teenagers across the country my age who opted for this route, for the same reasons.
It was here that I cut my teeth and, at least on its face, I refuse to feel ashamed of my behavior. Where I went wrong was the impulsively involved in fleeing, needing desperately to be with a girlfriend. For a lonely teenager, as I was then, I grew addicted to the feeling of being wanted, being needed. Those with whom I carried on a long distance relationship likely felt the same way I did. Distance, space, time, money--all of these things were barriers that I was willing to defy.
I realize now where the train came off the tracks, the sheer madness of this sort of behavior. In therapy, I’ve come to understand now just how starved I was for attention, how much I needed positive gratification by any means necessary. I wanted to be loved, mostly. A person with a severe anxiety disorder forms an identity as a loner, a mysterious stranger who no one knows, a solitary being who eventually makes his stealthy exit from the stage. I romanticized this part about myself, when what I was really doing was crying out just to be average, to be able to establish friendships in my life.
I would later adopt a song as especially pertinent to my condition. It speaks, quite critically, about people who are afraid of too much change but frustrated by routine.
Give us something familiar
Something similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady
Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere
Before fifty-year-olds were hooking up on the Internet, high school and middle school students were online first, linking up with kids their own age. The appeal, in part, arrived in the form of immediacy and instant gratification. This distinguished the practice from letter correspondence by mail, a more traditional “pen pal” relationship. The distance that separated us might be vast, but after school or on weekends, this other person, whoever it was, was always there.
We talked online through instant chat, e-mail, and often over the phone. She was the first of many to come. Due to the age and the transient nature of the medium, these relationships rarely stood the test of time. However, when girls close nearby were not available to me because of a sometimes paralyzing sense of anxiety, also part of my illness, I settled for what I could get. And, truthfully, I have since gathered that I was only one of several teenagers across the country my age who opted for this route, for the same reasons.
It was here that I cut my teeth and, at least on its face, I refuse to feel ashamed of my behavior. Where I went wrong was the impulsively involved in fleeing, needing desperately to be with a girlfriend. For a lonely teenager, as I was then, I grew addicted to the feeling of being wanted, being needed. Those with whom I carried on a long distance relationship likely felt the same way I did. Distance, space, time, money--all of these things were barriers that I was willing to defy.
I realize now where the train came off the tracks, the sheer madness of this sort of behavior. In therapy, I’ve come to understand now just how starved I was for attention, how much I needed positive gratification by any means necessary. I wanted to be loved, mostly. A person with a severe anxiety disorder forms an identity as a loner, a mysterious stranger who no one knows, a solitary being who eventually makes his stealthy exit from the stage. I romanticized this part about myself, when what I was really doing was crying out just to be average, to be able to establish friendships in my life.
I would later adopt a song as especially pertinent to my condition. It speaks, quite critically, about people who are afraid of too much change but frustrated by routine.
Give us something familiar
Something similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady
Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere
I began to rebel dramatically and after a while, I didn’t much care what got in my way. My illness had hemmed me in between the popular kids, who never much appealed to me, and the rejects whose basic identity as the eternally shunned made them resistant to accepting newcomers. Self-confidence would have done me a universe of good, but my basic insecurities were entrenched. No one knew how to help me and I had no way of being able to show them how.
The ennui of adolescence is nothing new, but the times change. Something else was brewing, though I was nowhere near ready to deal with it. During high school, I recognized that I was bisexual. I kept the matter to myself because I’d been raised in a homophobic environment at school, one especially prominent among other boys. The games I played outdoors were often laced with derogatory commentary, even as far back as elementary school.
I heard many disparaging remarks made about those who were not straight. Periodic online interaction gave me a tentative platform to confront that part of my identity as well, though I lacked the confidence to pursue men with the same energy that I did women. The men who expressed interest in me reminded me too much of myself.
They were often self-loathing and insecure (as I was), but at this stage, that pose had grown old and stale. I wanted to fit in to at least someone’s framework, if only to belong somewhere, anywhere. Gay relationships placed me once more in an outsider position. This is what I sought to avoid, whenever possible. As much as I said I enjoyed being a rebel, I really craved conformity, that is if conformity meant not having to be alone.
A boyfriend, whether I was five miles away or five hundred, would have required me to take on an additional layer of secrecy. I had no desire to hide what I was doing or with whom I happened to be infatuated. Not any longer. It would be a long time before I truly came to terms with my sexual orientation. Everyone I’ve ever met who is also bisexual has to reach resolution between two identities that can appear mutually exclusive. I pushed off the most uncomfortable portion until a little later.
The ennui of adolescence is nothing new, but the times change. Something else was brewing, though I was nowhere near ready to deal with it. During high school, I recognized that I was bisexual. I kept the matter to myself because I’d been raised in a homophobic environment at school, one especially prominent among other boys. The games I played outdoors were often laced with derogatory commentary, even as far back as elementary school.
I heard many disparaging remarks made about those who were not straight. Periodic online interaction gave me a tentative platform to confront that part of my identity as well, though I lacked the confidence to pursue men with the same energy that I did women. The men who expressed interest in me reminded me too much of myself.
They were often self-loathing and insecure (as I was), but at this stage, that pose had grown old and stale. I wanted to fit in to at least someone’s framework, if only to belong somewhere, anywhere. Gay relationships placed me once more in an outsider position. This is what I sought to avoid, whenever possible. As much as I said I enjoyed being a rebel, I really craved conformity, that is if conformity meant not having to be alone.
A boyfriend, whether I was five miles away or five hundred, would have required me to take on an additional layer of secrecy. I had no desire to hide what I was doing or with whom I happened to be infatuated. Not any longer. It would be a long time before I truly came to terms with my sexual orientation. Everyone I’ve ever met who is also bisexual has to reach resolution between two identities that can appear mutually exclusive. I pushed off the most uncomfortable portion until a little later.
Quote of the Week
Late again. Internet went down.
"Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil."- Matthew 5:37
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Saturday Video
Sorry about the delay. Last night, late evening storms in the DC area knocked out power and internet service.
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
So reckless and evil
Drinking and running around
The things I would do
Were the will of the Devil
I was giving my soul
For Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
If I could be king and ruler of nations,
Wear jewels and diamonds profound
I'd rather know that I have salvation
Than to know my reward
Is Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
If I could be king and ruler of nations,
Wear jewels and diamonds profound
I'd rather know that I have salvation
Than to know my reward
Is Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
When I live my life
When I live my life
So reckless and evil
Drinking and running around
The things I would do
Were the will of the Devil
I was giving my soul
For Satan's jeweled crown
Satan's jeweled crown
I've worn it so long
But God for my soul
has reached down
His love set me free
He made me His own,
and helped me cast off
Satan's jeweled crown
Friday, June 29, 2012
Time Will Tell
Another excerpt from Wrecking Ball.
The Internet revolutionized my life, as it did for millions of other Americans. In particular, it gave me access to other lonely kids looking for the same things I was. Live chats became phone calls, then became impossible, but potent crushes. I was usually too shy to reach out and flustered by girls who expressed their appreciation. It’s remarkably easy to develop feelings for someone whose face you may never have seen and who you know only as keystrokes on a monitor.
Looking years forward from here, I recall multiple trips made to visit cybercrushes. My travels took me as far away as California and Minnesota, though most were day trips. My loneliness can not be understated here, and perhaps too my neediness. One could, however, say the very same thing about those thoroughly infatuated with me. It cut both ways.
At first, I took a more conventional approach. My first girlfriend lived only a few miles away. She was a year younger than me, a freshman in high school; I was a sophomore. Though she had an odd demeanor and strange mannerisms, I always saw them as endearing. Her mother was extremely glad to observe my arrival on the scene. Though the sentiment was never expressed in my company, it was possible her mother had begun to wonder about whether her daughter was interested in boys at all.
We’d met at a church youth group function. My parents, requiring extra help to assist with my illness, had taken us to a non-denominational (read: Southern Baptist) church. Despite the fact that my mother never really took to the theology, she appreciated the strong community outreach found there. People prayed for me and brought food to the family to ease the constant stress of keeping me alive and out of trouble. The youth ministry was especially well-organized and I was accepted into it almost immediately.
One regular attender of our weekly group routinely invited her friends along. One of these friends became my very first girlfriend. Establishing a pattern true for many subsequent relationships, I expressed my interest and affection within a few minutes of us being introduced. In those days, I had only two speeds: fast and faster. This approach had turned several girls off earlier in my life, but she didn’t seem to have the same objections.
I remember the first time I arrived at her house, so nervous my hands were shaking while holding the steering column. I hadn’t gotten my license all that long ago and was petrified I’d get hopelessly lost. In the days before nearly everyone on the face of the Earth had a cell phone, getting lost was far easier. And, though I have improved with time, I’m not an especially good driver. The sense of spatial proportion and basic geometry required has always mystified and frustrated me. As it turns out, my worries were baseless.
Her mother took an immediate liking to me. She was very open with herself, which encouraged me to do the same. My girlfriend and I both, it was soon revealed, were taking medication to treat Attention Deficit Disorder. We bonded over a mutual medical problem and its side effects. We rarely ate and were thin as a rail. From her, I learned how to tolerate pineapple on a pizza, though I’m still not sure I like it. My girlfriend’s mother acted maternal and protective towards me, imploring me to eat more and expressing sympathy for my health.
I took photography in high school, done the old-fashioned way on film. The ease of digital photography has obliterated all the old rules. It seems that the only people who print to film these days are artists. Those who signed up for the class had to learn the painstaking, at times laborious way to enter a darkroom, develop negatives, project an image against photographic paper, and then fully bring to light a desired image. Contact sheets were a means of capturing the contents of a roll of film in one glance. One cut the contiguous series of exposures into uniform strips. Next, one organized them lengthwise across the page.
Some years ago, while visiting my parents, I came across some of my photographic work buried at the bottom of a drawer in what had become the guest bedroom. I hadn’t thought of her in years. I’d forgotten how, for a time, she’d been my primary model. She smiles back, though does not look directly at the camera. Nevertheless, she shows a prominent emotional interest in the person behind the lens. The photo that sticks out most has her posed against the outdoor railings of the bookstore where we spent our Friday evenings.
What we had only lasted a few months. I’m sure that’s not dissimilar from the experiences of many at that age. We spent most of our free time buying cheap, tacky items at a thrift store and hanging out at a coffee shop. What I remember about her most now was her addiction to lip balm. The brand she used was small and circular. She constantly reapplied coat after coat, almost compulsively. Because I wanted to appreciate the same things she did, I found myself adopting the habit myself.
I don’t even remember now what caused the breakup. If I had to wager a guess, I’d point a finger towards my illness, though this was true more because of psychological shortcomings on my part rather than a physical ones. In other words, I needed more than she could provide. Now, I wish I’d been more attentive to her feedback, but pain and sickness has a way of creating and ranking priorities based on immediate need. Although far less prominent than later, what I had was a slowly rumbling crisis-in-progress. Within a few months, it would substantially worsen and then become a disaster.
As it turns out, I didn’t have Attention Deficit Disorder after all. That was a blatant misdiagnosis, one of several that the first psychiatrist to treat me would make. I’d been prescribed the stimulant Adderall, which in those days was fairly new on the market. In time, slowly but surely, it would find its way onto the high school black market, for kids who used it to study or simply to enjoy the recreational effects.
If any precipitating factor caused my most substantial episode, the one that nearly proved fatal, it was most likely a result of abusing Adderall. In other words, I turned myself into a speed freak by legal means. As my depression worsened, the psychiatrist continually upped the dosage. Often I would call him on the phone, seeking relief, and I always sensed the panic and worry in his voice as he responded to the desperation in mine. What I wanted, he could not provide.
I honestly don’t remember how many milligrams I was supposed to be taking each day. Whatever it was, it was certainly well over the recommended maximum. And not only that, I was developing a strongly unhealthy dependency with every passing day. My father had taken to locking up the medication in a converted fishing tackle box, which he then padlocked shut. With some effort, I pried one side open so that I could reach in, grab the bottle, and take more. He quickly caught on to what I was doing, but by then, the damage was done.
My birthday falls exactly a week before Halloween, in late October. By now, I had turned 18, a legal adult in most states but not in Alabama. This would be an especially essential distinction later on in the process. My addiction deepened, my mood dropped, and it kept dropping. I kept falling farther and father downward. Teachers and fellow classmates didn’t seem to observe anything out of the ordinary, but then I’d never been an ordinary personality.
Years after the fact, I have been able to attain an explanation what was happening to me. After a time, the drug simply wasn’t working anymore. Before my collapse shortly before Thanksgiving 1998, I’d take a pill of Adderall, expecting the same effect as had been the case at the outset. Instead, I’d experience a perceptible high for only an hour, when once before I’d received eight. My constant over-usage created a paralyzing state of stimulant psychosis. Gratefully, I don’t remember the worst of the worst, but I do remember the depths of the depression that took hold tenaciously and did not abet for months.
I’d contemplated suicide many times before, but I had never reached the necessary depths of despair. The body has an ingenious knack for self-preservation, one meant to prolong living. This time, I’d get dangerously close to succeeding.
The Internet revolutionized my life, as it did for millions of other Americans. In particular, it gave me access to other lonely kids looking for the same things I was. Live chats became phone calls, then became impossible, but potent crushes. I was usually too shy to reach out and flustered by girls who expressed their appreciation. It’s remarkably easy to develop feelings for someone whose face you may never have seen and who you know only as keystrokes on a monitor.
Looking years forward from here, I recall multiple trips made to visit cybercrushes. My travels took me as far away as California and Minnesota, though most were day trips. My loneliness can not be understated here, and perhaps too my neediness. One could, however, say the very same thing about those thoroughly infatuated with me. It cut both ways.
At first, I took a more conventional approach. My first girlfriend lived only a few miles away. She was a year younger than me, a freshman in high school; I was a sophomore. Though she had an odd demeanor and strange mannerisms, I always saw them as endearing. Her mother was extremely glad to observe my arrival on the scene. Though the sentiment was never expressed in my company, it was possible her mother had begun to wonder about whether her daughter was interested in boys at all.
We’d met at a church youth group function. My parents, requiring extra help to assist with my illness, had taken us to a non-denominational (read: Southern Baptist) church. Despite the fact that my mother never really took to the theology, she appreciated the strong community outreach found there. People prayed for me and brought food to the family to ease the constant stress of keeping me alive and out of trouble. The youth ministry was especially well-organized and I was accepted into it almost immediately.
One regular attender of our weekly group routinely invited her friends along. One of these friends became my very first girlfriend. Establishing a pattern true for many subsequent relationships, I expressed my interest and affection within a few minutes of us being introduced. In those days, I had only two speeds: fast and faster. This approach had turned several girls off earlier in my life, but she didn’t seem to have the same objections.
I remember the first time I arrived at her house, so nervous my hands were shaking while holding the steering column. I hadn’t gotten my license all that long ago and was petrified I’d get hopelessly lost. In the days before nearly everyone on the face of the Earth had a cell phone, getting lost was far easier. And, though I have improved with time, I’m not an especially good driver. The sense of spatial proportion and basic geometry required has always mystified and frustrated me. As it turns out, my worries were baseless.
Her mother took an immediate liking to me. She was very open with herself, which encouraged me to do the same. My girlfriend and I both, it was soon revealed, were taking medication to treat Attention Deficit Disorder. We bonded over a mutual medical problem and its side effects. We rarely ate and were thin as a rail. From her, I learned how to tolerate pineapple on a pizza, though I’m still not sure I like it. My girlfriend’s mother acted maternal and protective towards me, imploring me to eat more and expressing sympathy for my health.
I took photography in high school, done the old-fashioned way on film. The ease of digital photography has obliterated all the old rules. It seems that the only people who print to film these days are artists. Those who signed up for the class had to learn the painstaking, at times laborious way to enter a darkroom, develop negatives, project an image against photographic paper, and then fully bring to light a desired image. Contact sheets were a means of capturing the contents of a roll of film in one glance. One cut the contiguous series of exposures into uniform strips. Next, one organized them lengthwise across the page.
Some years ago, while visiting my parents, I came across some of my photographic work buried at the bottom of a drawer in what had become the guest bedroom. I hadn’t thought of her in years. I’d forgotten how, for a time, she’d been my primary model. She smiles back, though does not look directly at the camera. Nevertheless, she shows a prominent emotional interest in the person behind the lens. The photo that sticks out most has her posed against the outdoor railings of the bookstore where we spent our Friday evenings.
What we had only lasted a few months. I’m sure that’s not dissimilar from the experiences of many at that age. We spent most of our free time buying cheap, tacky items at a thrift store and hanging out at a coffee shop. What I remember about her most now was her addiction to lip balm. The brand she used was small and circular. She constantly reapplied coat after coat, almost compulsively. Because I wanted to appreciate the same things she did, I found myself adopting the habit myself.
I don’t even remember now what caused the breakup. If I had to wager a guess, I’d point a finger towards my illness, though this was true more because of psychological shortcomings on my part rather than a physical ones. In other words, I needed more than she could provide. Now, I wish I’d been more attentive to her feedback, but pain and sickness has a way of creating and ranking priorities based on immediate need. Although far less prominent than later, what I had was a slowly rumbling crisis-in-progress. Within a few months, it would substantially worsen and then become a disaster.
As it turns out, I didn’t have Attention Deficit Disorder after all. That was a blatant misdiagnosis, one of several that the first psychiatrist to treat me would make. I’d been prescribed the stimulant Adderall, which in those days was fairly new on the market. In time, slowly but surely, it would find its way onto the high school black market, for kids who used it to study or simply to enjoy the recreational effects.
If any precipitating factor caused my most substantial episode, the one that nearly proved fatal, it was most likely a result of abusing Adderall. In other words, I turned myself into a speed freak by legal means. As my depression worsened, the psychiatrist continually upped the dosage. Often I would call him on the phone, seeking relief, and I always sensed the panic and worry in his voice as he responded to the desperation in mine. What I wanted, he could not provide.
I honestly don’t remember how many milligrams I was supposed to be taking each day. Whatever it was, it was certainly well over the recommended maximum. And not only that, I was developing a strongly unhealthy dependency with every passing day. My father had taken to locking up the medication in a converted fishing tackle box, which he then padlocked shut. With some effort, I pried one side open so that I could reach in, grab the bottle, and take more. He quickly caught on to what I was doing, but by then, the damage was done.
My birthday falls exactly a week before Halloween, in late October. By now, I had turned 18, a legal adult in most states but not in Alabama. This would be an especially essential distinction later on in the process. My addiction deepened, my mood dropped, and it kept dropping. I kept falling farther and father downward. Teachers and fellow classmates didn’t seem to observe anything out of the ordinary, but then I’d never been an ordinary personality.
Years after the fact, I have been able to attain an explanation what was happening to me. After a time, the drug simply wasn’t working anymore. Before my collapse shortly before Thanksgiving 1998, I’d take a pill of Adderall, expecting the same effect as had been the case at the outset. Instead, I’d experience a perceptible high for only an hour, when once before I’d received eight. My constant over-usage created a paralyzing state of stimulant psychosis. Gratefully, I don’t remember the worst of the worst, but I do remember the depths of the depression that took hold tenaciously and did not abet for months.
I’d contemplated suicide many times before, but I had never reached the necessary depths of despair. The body has an ingenious knack for self-preservation, one meant to prolong living. This time, I’d get dangerously close to succeeding.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Nicer the Nice, The Higher the Price
Another unedited excerpt from Wrecking Ball
________________
It’s difficult to pinpoint my first manic episode. The most effective psychiatrist I visited told me in my late teens that I might well develop full-blown bipolar by my early twenties. Before, of course, I was only depressed. He was correct. Looking backwards, for a multi-year period, I can observe the slow, but inevitable ascent towards true mania. My unwillingness to protect my personal safety was a harbinger of things yet to arrive.
At first, I was only hypomanic, or near-manic. A truly manic episode cannot be confused as anything else. Hypomania can be excused as eccentricity of personality or idiosyncrasy. In mania, others can clear identify a lack of proper emotional balance and mental health. In those times, I talked out of my head and exhibited obscene amounts of energy. I became hyper-sexual, hyper-religious, borderline delusional, and completely unable to rein in on myself.
I was 19 now. By a small miracle and by my mother’s work behind the scene to help, I’d somehow graduated from high school. Had I stayed healthy, I’d have qualified for numerous scholarship offers, especially those from out-of-state schools. Now, I had to take what I could get. My father, knowing the system, convinced the Alabama Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to subsidize my tuition, minus the cost of textbooks.
Observing the provisions of the tuition payment, I could have attended any public college or university in the state. Both of my parents attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, which was a forty-five minute commute due west. I considered this for a time, but decided I wasn’t well enough yet to live apart from my parents and my doctors. Going back and forth from place to place would be a hassle, and I did not underestimate my own emotional and physical fragility.
Instead, I stayed in Birmingham, and enrolled at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. UAB was an urban campus, for many years a strictly commuter school, or a school of last resort for those who could not academically qualify for their first choices. While a student, I was not exposed to the insularity of a small college town. The business-as-usual demeanor of the rest of the city meant that we college students were just another energetic activity being held on the Southside of town. In some ways, I think this was a blessing in disguise. The world was never supposed to revolve around the university, the students, the faculty, and everyone else intimately involved.
At this stage, I was still exceedingly frail. My first quarter I took the three course full-load minimum during the week. From the instant I returned home on Friday afternoon, I went immediately to bed and rarely left for the remainder of the weekend. When grades were posted, however, I found I’d received two B’s and an A. I barely missed an A in Sociology and, had I been more focused, would have received one in Music Appreciation. Not bad for someone who many thought would never be able to even enroll, much less to take a single course.
Having done well my first term, I enrolled for the spring quarter. The wind was finally at my back. I should add, though, that my emotional problems were nowhere near resolved. I was largely hanging on by the thread, and still waiting for the other shoe to drop. But in the meantime, I had begun to associate with sorts of people who I would have never considered being around even a few years before. The residual effects of trauma changed my life dramatically.
Spring quarter completed, I decided not to take classes in the summer. Shortly thereafter, I began to look for ways to assuage my boredom, to break out of my self-imposed isolation. Living with my parents, while necessary, was often a hindrance. I wanted to expand my base of friends, particularly because I’d so rarely had very many of them.
For several years, the city of Birmingham put on a large, open-air music festival in early June. The tickets were affordable, the acts usually of middling quality, but few my age went only for the music. We were equally restless and bored senseless with the sterility of the suburbs. Our means of leaving that dull world of big box stores and chain restaurants was to go downtown.
Then a freshman in college, I drove downtown along with one of my few close friends. Following the end of the day’s proceedings, I struck up a random conversation with another student from my school. He invited me back to his house, asking if I wanted to hang out for a while. In those days, I had the stamina and the inclination want to be out until four in the morning.
I wasn’t dense. I knew what he was implying. Prior to then, I’d only smoked pot. Since the age of fifteen, I’d been a moderately heavy cigarette smoker. When I drank, I usually drank to get drunk and rarely paced myself. In this stage of my life, I remained hedonistic and fatalistic. I assumed I’d never reach the age of 30, which to me, freed me up for lots of chemical experimentation.
I arrived at a typical sort of student lodgings, an ancient wooden house two block from campus. Four people were sharing space, splitting the rent. Later I would learn that three of them were in an godawful band, which practiced once a week on Saturdays, after classes were over for the week. I sat in on the rehearsals, wishing I could contribute, while noting that doing so was probably a colossal waste of my time.
A drum kit, bass guitar, and cheap electric guitar were scattered haphazardly across the aged hardwood floors when I arrived. After a few words of small talk, I uncovered the intention of this impromptu trip. One of them had procured a bottle of liquid LSD. For $4 a hit, I could dose myself sufficiently for the next several hours. At an earlier time in my life, I would have gone no further. When I was emotionally stable, powerful drugs like acid held no attraction, mainly repulsion. It is amazing what a person will do when he or she has lost the fear of death.
If I hadn’t been so miserable and isolated, I would not have explored the lengths to which I would test my own mortality. What no one knew is that a week or so before I’d been playing chicken with the cars on University Boulevard. On my way back and forth between classes, I’d been walking in front of speeding cars, dodging them at the last minute. I timed myself with a sort of lunatic precision to narrowly avoid being hit.
Two people on the opposite side of the road saw me. I saw the terror in their eyes and in the tone of their voices. I think I smiled at them as I reached the curb directly in front of me. I’m sure they thought I was crazy. These were the sorts of risks I was more than willing to undertake. With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that my absolute worst times had concluded, but that I had a long way to go before I pulled myself out of the valley.
I paid a grand total of $8 for two hits of a powerful psychedelic drug. The dealer had concentrated his product inside a tiny bottle. The container was usually used to hold highly concentrated breath freshener. One drop equaled one dose. I was eager to see what was next in store for me. I’d read romanticized narratives of acid-drenched hippies in San Francisco, and wanted to know what had been that transformative for them.
I have always had a crafty, sneaky side. I say this without pride, but with the recognition that this part of my personality has kept me alive and out of trouble on more than one instance. When everyone dissipated, slinking off to their own private corners and devices, I rose and entered the kitchen. The LSD bottle had been kept inside a freezer, for reasons unknown.
It balanced precariously, leaning sideways against a frosted plastic cup. I acknowledged that, weirdly, the liquid inside somehow never managed to solidify. I placed the bottle between thumb and forefinger of my right hand, then squeezed a copious amount of psychedelic chemical onto my tongue. Since then, I’m told that the slang term for what I did is called, in certain corners,“trenching”. Trenching it might have been, but it was mostly stupid.
I would like to say that I saw chairs and ceiling fans dissolving in front of me. I would like to speak of how colors bled into each other. I’d love to share an anecdote about potent, constant hallucinations that filled my world full of wonder. Instead, I must concede the truth. Though I ingested God knows how much LSD, I never felt, heard, smelled, tasted, or sensed much of anything. Honestly, I felt cheated.
Others I observed, as I walked the length of the house did, seem to have experienced something profound. I knew they weren’t faking it. I, however, after waiting for a couple hours in expectancy, retired to a nearby couch and promptly fell fast asleep.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Come the Day
Well I might see the irony,
but I've tried
and I find I don’t.
Everyone knows
how the punch line goes.
I suppose that means they get the joke.
you know,
I can see them fake a fall
make believe to save a soul
and I bless each day they don’t take it all.
Because everybody's telling me
word for word
Like I never heard before
and it gets to the end
and again my friend
and I can’t raise a smile no more
You know,
less concern I’ve never seen
best I'll learn to damn your sympathy
I curse you all from the day you need
This giving is one thing
driven through something else
divide it around amongst yourselves
get it out and spare me none
there is no doubt that day will come
Because everybody's telling me
word for word
like I never heard before
and then it gets to the bit
where it turns to shit
and I can’t raise a smile no more
you know
You know,
less concern I’ve never seen
Best I'll learn to damn your sympathy
I curse you all from the day you need
I curse you all from the day you need
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Excerpt from Wrecking Ball
This is a passage from the novel-in-progress, Wrecking Ball. In it I am discussing my first psychiatric hospitalization at age 15, and also my first sexual experience.
_________________
Waking Up and Getting Up Has Never Been Easy
The whole of the worst times are a blur. This is a survival mechanism for those in acute states of crisis. For some reason, the psychological pain I experienced was always augmented by a sharp stabbing physical pain in the middle of my forehead. Often I lay flat on my stomach in the middle of the carpeted floor. Seeking to rid myself of the agony any way I could, I slammed my head down hard against the ground, repeatedly, deliberately. The pain lasted all day at times. If I was lucky, it lifted unexpectedly, miraculously, presenting me with opportunities to escape the house.
Nothing felt more freeing than to get in my car and drive to the record store. I spent almost the entirety of my adolescent income on CDs. Music had always been a reliable solace for me from as soon as I could remember. My mother had been an avid collector of LPs in her own youth, and I benefited from the stockpile. One of my earliest memories is of listening to the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky while dancing energetically across the room.
Because music was a passion, I obsessively memorized details about my favorite groups. In the early days of the Internet, I frequently used the resources found within what was then still referred to as “The Information Superhighway”. Cyberspace (another period synonym) was an excellent source of knowledge, one that informed about bands and artists that would have otherwise remained unknown to me. It was fun to me to uncover, through my own detective work, obscure sounds and genres.
My thoughts also lingered on another subject, one far less obtainable than the latest weekly release or music review. The people with whom I kept company knew this fixation well. In other words, I was hopelessly obsessed about finding a girlfriend. I’d felt separated from the rest of the world already, but now I felt a new challenge. Now, the pressure was on to couple up with someone else. I felt regularly abandoned by the other sex when seeking someone to date, but relationships were admittedly only part of the equation. There was something else much baser I wanted even more.
Hospitalization was one of the few constants in my life at that time. For a time, I rarely went three months without having to be readmitted for another stay. Depression had returned. In my teens, I had yet to experience a manic episode, but I knew well the dull ache of depression. I knew the way it slowly suffocated a person, each day removing energy, enthusiasm, and the very will to live.
Here I am, back again, I thought to myself. I felt my presence somehow scripted and scheduled, as though I was a performer on a six-month tour of the country. Though not usually the kind of person who caused trouble, at least not without first covering his tracks, I took a shine to a fellow patient. I justified it to myself easily. My illness had kept me prostrate for years. I deserved the right to flirt shamelessly.
If I’d had the benefit of hindsight, I would not have even bothered. Hindsight, unfortunately, comes with experience. Experience was something I was severely lacking. Starting out of the gate, I’m sure we’re all a little naive and unpracticed. If there is some silver lining, it is that at least her feelings for me were mutual. Guessing wrongly and being disappointed is never pleasant in any context. Rejection is unsettling regardless of age.
TLOAs (Temporary Leave of Absence) were sometimes granted to patients by admitting psychiatrists at this particular hospital. The object of my affection was granted a few hours away from the ward every other day. She always returned stoned, drawing a series of crude ink pen renderings of marijuana leaves on notebook paper. They looked like some kind of unorthodox wallpaper design. If these were warning signs, I took care to ignore them.
We barely spoke in our verbal correspondence. There was really no need to confirm what the both of us felt for each other. Emotions and desire can be expressed by general proximity as well as speech. My frustration with being trapped inside a locked unit paralleled my past experiences with women. If anything, it seemed like a sort of perverse analogy. Once imprisoned by my mind, I was now imprisoned bodily. My illness had kept me restrained for long enough; now it was my time to break out and do what I wanted.
I decided to sneak into her room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” This was said with a strongly slurred southern drawl.
“Don’t you know how much trouble you can get into?”
I indicated that I didn’t much care. In constant, daily pain, I was seeking a temporary, but hopefully intense distraction.
Previously sitting on her bed, legs swinging off the mattress, she stood to face me directly. I moved towards her, noting by her own body language that she was receptive to an extremely verboten public display of affection. We kissed, awkwardly, the way that the young and unpracticed do. We could have stopped there, but I wanted to push the envelope as far as it would take me, and I suppose that’s not at all atypical for teenage boys.
She reached down to my sides, and took hold of both of my hands. Guiding me, she forcefully pushed them across her breasts. The development was not unwelcome, but the gesture was unexpected and abrupt. I felt out-of-control, off-center, wobbling, unable to anticipate and formulate a proper response, to let her know I enjoyed the sensation but was knocked sideways by it.
The awkwardness made me recognize how impulsive this act had been. I turned away and fled, but a nurse saw me beating a path back to my own room. By the expression on her face, she was not pleased. I was given a lecture and told in no uncertain terms to ever try a thing like that again.
A couple hours later that same nurse told me a particularly incriminating bit of advice. “You do know she has a boyfriend, don’t you?”
This was said to imply that I was merely wasting my time. Perhaps she was also indicating the fellow patient's lack of mental health. Had I purely been seeking a relationship, then I might have felt repulsed, betrayed somehow. But I couldn’t help but feel victorious. My world was catch as catch can. Or, as it is written in the Old Testament, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
People in states of imminent disaster, devastation, or war know something of how I felt. Plainly put, I had no future. I only could live in the here and now. When the pain is omnipresent, one loses sight of what we’d ordinarily call a normal perspective. I wanted a sexual outlet, so I made the most of the opportunity. Holding oneself back for any reason, for anything, was a luxury. To me, it was a fanciful notion held by those who can afford to prepare for tomorrow.
_________________
Waking Up and Getting Up Has Never Been Easy
The whole of the worst times are a blur. This is a survival mechanism for those in acute states of crisis. For some reason, the psychological pain I experienced was always augmented by a sharp stabbing physical pain in the middle of my forehead. Often I lay flat on my stomach in the middle of the carpeted floor. Seeking to rid myself of the agony any way I could, I slammed my head down hard against the ground, repeatedly, deliberately. The pain lasted all day at times. If I was lucky, it lifted unexpectedly, miraculously, presenting me with opportunities to escape the house.
Nothing felt more freeing than to get in my car and drive to the record store. I spent almost the entirety of my adolescent income on CDs. Music had always been a reliable solace for me from as soon as I could remember. My mother had been an avid collector of LPs in her own youth, and I benefited from the stockpile. One of my earliest memories is of listening to the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky while dancing energetically across the room.
Because music was a passion, I obsessively memorized details about my favorite groups. In the early days of the Internet, I frequently used the resources found within what was then still referred to as “The Information Superhighway”. Cyberspace (another period synonym) was an excellent source of knowledge, one that informed about bands and artists that would have otherwise remained unknown to me. It was fun to me to uncover, through my own detective work, obscure sounds and genres.
My thoughts also lingered on another subject, one far less obtainable than the latest weekly release or music review. The people with whom I kept company knew this fixation well. In other words, I was hopelessly obsessed about finding a girlfriend. I’d felt separated from the rest of the world already, but now I felt a new challenge. Now, the pressure was on to couple up with someone else. I felt regularly abandoned by the other sex when seeking someone to date, but relationships were admittedly only part of the equation. There was something else much baser I wanted even more.
Hospitalization was one of the few constants in my life at that time. For a time, I rarely went three months without having to be readmitted for another stay. Depression had returned. In my teens, I had yet to experience a manic episode, but I knew well the dull ache of depression. I knew the way it slowly suffocated a person, each day removing energy, enthusiasm, and the very will to live.
Here I am, back again, I thought to myself. I felt my presence somehow scripted and scheduled, as though I was a performer on a six-month tour of the country. Though not usually the kind of person who caused trouble, at least not without first covering his tracks, I took a shine to a fellow patient. I justified it to myself easily. My illness had kept me prostrate for years. I deserved the right to flirt shamelessly.
If I’d had the benefit of hindsight, I would not have even bothered. Hindsight, unfortunately, comes with experience. Experience was something I was severely lacking. Starting out of the gate, I’m sure we’re all a little naive and unpracticed. If there is some silver lining, it is that at least her feelings for me were mutual. Guessing wrongly and being disappointed is never pleasant in any context. Rejection is unsettling regardless of age.
TLOAs (Temporary Leave of Absence) were sometimes granted to patients by admitting psychiatrists at this particular hospital. The object of my affection was granted a few hours away from the ward every other day. She always returned stoned, drawing a series of crude ink pen renderings of marijuana leaves on notebook paper. They looked like some kind of unorthodox wallpaper design. If these were warning signs, I took care to ignore them.
We barely spoke in our verbal correspondence. There was really no need to confirm what the both of us felt for each other. Emotions and desire can be expressed by general proximity as well as speech. My frustration with being trapped inside a locked unit paralleled my past experiences with women. If anything, it seemed like a sort of perverse analogy. Once imprisoned by my mind, I was now imprisoned bodily. My illness had kept me restrained for long enough; now it was my time to break out and do what I wanted.
I decided to sneak into her room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” This was said with a strongly slurred southern drawl.
“Don’t you know how much trouble you can get into?”
I indicated that I didn’t much care. In constant, daily pain, I was seeking a temporary, but hopefully intense distraction.
Previously sitting on her bed, legs swinging off the mattress, she stood to face me directly. I moved towards her, noting by her own body language that she was receptive to an extremely verboten public display of affection. We kissed, awkwardly, the way that the young and unpracticed do. We could have stopped there, but I wanted to push the envelope as far as it would take me, and I suppose that’s not at all atypical for teenage boys.
She reached down to my sides, and took hold of both of my hands. Guiding me, she forcefully pushed them across her breasts. The development was not unwelcome, but the gesture was unexpected and abrupt. I felt out-of-control, off-center, wobbling, unable to anticipate and formulate a proper response, to let her know I enjoyed the sensation but was knocked sideways by it.
The awkwardness made me recognize how impulsive this act had been. I turned away and fled, but a nurse saw me beating a path back to my own room. By the expression on her face, she was not pleased. I was given a lecture and told in no uncertain terms to ever try a thing like that again.
A couple hours later that same nurse told me a particularly incriminating bit of advice. “You do know she has a boyfriend, don’t you?”
This was said to imply that I was merely wasting my time. Perhaps she was also indicating the fellow patient's lack of mental health. Had I purely been seeking a relationship, then I might have felt repulsed, betrayed somehow. But I couldn’t help but feel victorious. My world was catch as catch can. Or, as it is written in the Old Testament, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
People in states of imminent disaster, devastation, or war know something of how I felt. Plainly put, I had no future. I only could live in the here and now. When the pain is omnipresent, one loses sight of what we’d ordinarily call a normal perspective. I wanted a sexual outlet, so I made the most of the opportunity. Holding oneself back for any reason, for anything, was a luxury. To me, it was a fanciful notion held by those who can afford to prepare for tomorrow.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Book Announcement
My mother and I are now writing a book jointly. The premise is that of a personal memoir of my life, especially how the illness affected my nuclear family. It includes my history of bipolar disorder and her own parallel recollections of everything that happened.
If we ever get it published, I can promise you now that the plot will never be dull for an instant. Past events have made quite the storyteller out of me. Because I have never written anything lengthier than a thirty-page paper in my life, the sheer length alone is intimidating.
Because several hundred miles separates us, the two of us have been working within the confines of a shared Google Document. I add my sections, then set them apart from hers. She does the same with what she adds to the manuscript.
What unnerves me a little is the harrowing honesty of my mother's contributions. Years after the fact, they retain their power to horrify. And with every word I read, I cannot deny how much I am my mother's child. Our personalities are very similar. I used to believe that nothing could shock me and now I find much that can. I think the last of my innocence regarding parental infallibility is ceasing to be.
The book's working title is Wrecking Ball. Our work is steady and deliberate. Should an editor find it worth taking to print, I'd be most gratified. I've tried to go into this with the appropriate attitude, but I think what we've produced so far is extremely interesting.
If we ever get it published, I can promise you now that the plot will never be dull for an instant. Past events have made quite the storyteller out of me. Because I have never written anything lengthier than a thirty-page paper in my life, the sheer length alone is intimidating.
Because several hundred miles separates us, the two of us have been working within the confines of a shared Google Document. I add my sections, then set them apart from hers. She does the same with what she adds to the manuscript.
What unnerves me a little is the harrowing honesty of my mother's contributions. Years after the fact, they retain their power to horrify. And with every word I read, I cannot deny how much I am my mother's child. Our personalities are very similar. I used to believe that nothing could shock me and now I find much that can. I think the last of my innocence regarding parental infallibility is ceasing to be.
The book's working title is Wrecking Ball. Our work is steady and deliberate. Should an editor find it worth taking to print, I'd be most gratified. I've tried to go into this with the appropriate attitude, but I think what we've produced so far is extremely interesting.
Somebody to Love
Back to the multi-track recorder. I added three separate vocal parts, a rhythm guitar backing, and two small guitar solos. Fairly ornate for me.
When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
When the garden flowers baby are dead, yes and
Your mind, your mind is so full of red
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
Your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his
Yeah, but in your head, baby,
I'm afraid you don't know where it is
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
Tears are running down and down and down your breast
And your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest
Don't you want somebody to love? Don't you
need somebody to love? Wouldn't you
love somebody to love? You better
Find somebody to love
When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
When the garden flowers baby are dead, yes and
Your mind, your mind is so full of red
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
Your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his
Yeah, but in your head, baby,
I'm afraid you don't know where it is
Don't you want somebody to love, don't you
Need somebody to love, wouldn't you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
Tears are running down and down and down your breast
And your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest
Don't you want somebody to love? Don't you
need somebody to love? Wouldn't you
love somebody to love? You better
Find somebody to love
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Quote of the Week
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."- Oscar Wilde
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Saturday Video
Lady, you keep asking
why he likes you. How come?
Wonder why he wants more
Wonder why he wants more
if he's just had some.
Boys, she's got more to play
with in the way of toys.
Lady's eyes go off and on
Lady's eyes go off and on
with a finger full of glue,
Lips are drawn upon her face
in come-to-me tattoo.
Creamy suntan color that
fades when she bathes.
Paper dresses catch on fire
Paper dresses catch on fire
and you lose her in the haze.
Don't ever change lady,
he likes you that way.
Because he just had his hair done
and he wants to use your wig,
He's going off the drug thing
cause his veins are getting big,
He wants to sell his paintings
He wants to sell his paintings
but the market is slow.
They're only paying him two grams now
for a one-man abstract show.
Don't ever change people even if you can.
Don't ever change people even if you can.
You are your own best toy to play with;
remote control hands.
Made for each other. Made in Japan.
Woman with a greasy heart, automatic man.
Made for each other. Made in Japan.
Woman with a greasy heart, automatic man.
Don't ever change people.
Your face will hit the fan.
Don't ever change people even if you can.
Don't change before the empire falls.
You laugh so hard you crack the walls.
You laugh so hard you crack the walls.
Friday, June 22, 2012
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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