What Gaia taught me about grief

I've mentioned several times on this blog that emotions and I have not been super pals throughout most of my life. Everyone remembers that great (terrible?) cave and wall metaphor - something which now certainly is reminiscent of the Cask of Amontillado - and I like to think that I was at least somewhat clear in that post. Particularly when talking about the positives and negatives of opening yourself up. Most of the people who have commented on it to me have said how happy they are that, for me, the wall lies in a pile of rubble.

I wish I could share their enthusiasm, but as I also said in that post, it's a double-edged sword at the best of times. I recently ran into a situation where, again, I reacted quite differently than I have in the past. And while I feel like a large part of that is the different factors involved in this scenario, I can't deny that the wall-shaped hole in my brain may have something to do with it.

I don't want to spend too much setting the scene. At my step-mother's house there are many cats. Or at least there used to be; it seems like that number is shrinking almost daily now. I lived there from summer 2008 to winter of 2013, so a fair amount of time spent in one place. And in that time I got to know all the cats and dogs, like you do. Gaia was one of these: a rescue together with her daughter, Luna, she was a tortoiseshell who was pretty round, kind of like a meatball, and had a real attitude. It used to lead to some stand-offs with her and one of the cats we brought, Ricky, a Scottish Fold who was just super-awesome (and also had a real attitude).

Gaia was nuuuuuuuuts about me. This was often annoying, as cats so frequently are: she would hear my voice in the kitchen and come running, then lay over my feet/in the middle of the kitchen and attack me (playfully, but still) as I tried to walk by; she would follow me around meowing with this urgent cry that made you wanna shake her; she liked to go into the basement (where I spent most of my time) and then refuse to get off the steps, either deciding she wanted to leave immediately or just generally getting in the way of everyone trying to get up and down the stairs all the time. You know - annoying.

But she was also adorable and lovely, and a little nuts (as all torties are). She would lay on my feet, as I already mentioned, and I'd pet her rough and she'd make hilarious noises and rub against my shoes so hard she fell over. She would then attack the shoe, often clinging to it as I tried to walk away so I would be half-dragging her across the floor. Among many other awesome and excellent things she did, but that's the most immediate one. Oh, sometimes after getting her all worked up she would scratch her face/neck and go "mrow-row-row-row-row" VERY loudly. Hilarious.

In the past year or two, however she's been looking worse. She lost a lot of weight, and last year she was in real bad shape - in fact some people already wanted to dismiss her as 'old and dying' and put her to sleep - but through the intercession of my sister she was taken to the vet, they looked her over and helped her out and she was back to her old self. More-or-less, anyway; she never quite regained that lost weight, and Meatball Cat became more of a parody name than a truism.

Fast-forward to this past weekend. I hear from my brother (who is the only sibling at the house right now - my sister is pet-sitting for another family) that she's in bad shape, and will probably be put down soon, so I get ready and I go over there to see her one last time. We spent some time at the pet-sitting house hoping that my sister would get the green-light to come over and leave the pets there for a while, but that never came so my brother and I went home without her.

I can't really describe what it was like. She was in my brother's room; she had crawled under his desk, as cats are wont to do, and was laying there. Stretched out, arms and legs straight out, like she had just fallen over sideways. Her eyes couldn't close, and there was a large amount of liquid issuing from the one, which didn't stop while I was there. She couldn't move or focus the eyeballs themselves. There was a dish of water next to her which she had not touched because she couldn't. I put some water on a finger and tried to get her to drink at least a little, but to no avail. Her breathing was shallow and labored.

But she was still alive, and as I spoke to her and pet her and tried to reassure her however I could over the next two hours and change, I would see glimmers that she was at least somewhat conscious of what was going on. Her face would twitch, the muscles around her eyes moving slightly. Sometimes her paws would twitch. They were cold, so I asked my brother to provide a shirt to throw on over her. It was a small gesture but at least it made me feel like I could do something.

Now, this isn't a post about anger. Anger comes much easier to me than grief, and I right now recalling events I'm feeling a pretty even mixture of both. I learned that she had been virtually unable to walk since Friday - this was on a Sunday evening, I should mention - and that no effort - none, zip, nothing - had been made to get her to a vet. Nothing. So she had laid there, slowly starving and/or thirsting to death, if whatever had happened to her brain wouldn't kill her first, for literally days, with those who could have done something waved it away with, frankly, ridiculous and self-deluding assurances.

But like I said, that's not what this entry is about. I don't mean to offend anyone; that's my interpretation of events, which I feel strongly about and which I believe is justified, but that's another post for another time. See how easy it was for me to distract myself from writing about grief - I don't want to deny I was tearing up while writing those paragraphs describing her last day, because I was - by focusing on anger?

The grief is what hit me the hardest at the time. I couldn't even summon the fire to be angry during those two hours, while I was watching her lay there, so far removed from the animal I once knew. I want to put it out there that I have felt grief. Good God have I felt grief. Our family hasn't been the luckiest in the past few years, and I can't deny that I felt grief when Ricky, our excellent cat we'd had for about 13 years, wandered down to the basement one day, laid down under a desk, made a sickening meowing noise, and then went limp. I was petting him and trying to coax him, but it wasn't working; I then took my dead cat and laid him in a box, to be buried the next morning. Or when I learned our other amazing cat (received all the way back in 2000/2001), Leo, who was Ricky's half-brother (but a straight-eared fold), developed serious issues with his breathing. My brother's girlfriend was handling it at the time, and towards the end it was truly horrendeous - his sinuses had partially collapsed and he just.... I mean I can't imagine. I can't imagine how hard it was for her. Mallory, if you're reading this, I... I mean I thanked you at the time, but I don't think I understood fully. Because it is awful.

Or when our other cats died. Or when we showed up, literally penniless, at a house in New York, rented for the next month, which was coated in mold and was essentially unlivable; a house where we spent the next month, what items we could fit in all thrown into the living room, where we all slept on mattresses and tried to stay out of the other rooms (which always gave me a headache if I spent too long there). Or when we came back from the beach one day in Ocean City to learn that our mother had died in New York. Or at the wake. Or other, also-very-bad things which I probably shouldn't share in a public blog.

The point is, I've felt grief before this. But it had always been like pulling off a band-aid: a quick sting which fades. Some stings take longer to fade than others, it's true, but all fade. That's life, and while I'm not quite sure if Time heals all wounds, it can at least reduce them to festering scabs which sometimes burst open again during heavy exertion or changes in barometric pressure.

But a big part of those moments of grief is that the causes were instant. When Ricky died, he seemed fine, came downstairs, and died. Instant. When we learned our mother had died, it had already been several hours. Instant. When other relatives have died, or pets, or any other horrible thing has happened to us, it's either been at a distance or instant. Or, in the case of the Mold House, as we call it, a long (and difficult) present that we hope will get better.

But with Gaia it was different. I had never sat by and watched something suffer before, with no possibility of recovery. I know that humans are the only animal cursed with their own mortality, but something in the animal mind tells it when it's about to die; elephants have graveyards, gulls have the sea, and cats - well, cats are known for crawling under hard-to-reach places to die, so no one can see them. They don't like revealing weakness, which is maybe another reason why I get along with them so well.

What happens when that instinct goes off, and leads an animal to choose its final place... and then it doesn't quite happen? What if instead of an instant death they suffer slowly, locked in a state between both life and death? In that moment when the instinct fires off, do they realize what's happening? Do they lay there, feeling their breaths become shorter and shorter, their vitals weakening and shutting down, their body losing its heat? Do they know what's happening?

Maybe they don't; I don't know. But it's given me a lot to think about over the last few days, and it was a whole lot to think about Sunday night. The immensity of what was happening was clear, at least to me, though it seemed like most others were either blind to it or numb to it. Which is how I would have been, before, I think. Trying not to feel anything.

Because it was fucking terrible. I was crying for about two hours straight, and while I am not the most masculine man in the world, I don't like crying and I don't cry easily or often. But for two hours I sat there, blowing my nose as the tears fell, and I really thought about all this stuff. And I even recorded a video; I don't know why, but I just began talking to myself and thought this might be a good opportunity to have for future reference. I'll never let anyone see it, I'm sure; though I speak to a third party, it's waaaay too personal. And cheesy: in that moment I was not my most articulate or witty, I'm sorry to say. But I felt like it was important, because it shows me myself grieving, something I have experienced before, but tightly-reined and as brief as I could make it. It shows my reaction to an ongoing incident, one happening right before me, and though I'm mostly incoherent throughout it, or silent, I guess it doesn't really matter.

Just sitting there and being sad is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I really, really, really really really wanted to leave, go distract myself with something, stop thinking about it. Because that would have been easy, at least for me; I've gotten extremely good at compartmentalizing and dissembling. And it's gotten easier the further it's gotten from Sunday, too. I try to think about it at least once or twice a day, just to keep it in my mind, but it is of course a sad memory and my unconscious tries to not dwell on it. Soon, I'm sure, I won't think about it much unless reminded of it by some outside factor.

But I didn't leave, and that's the point. I didn't distract myself, because I wanted to spend the time with her, and be with her. And I don't even know if she knew I was there, or if she felt anything at all. I hope she did, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because I was mostly there for Me. I felt like she deserved, what, at least two hours of my time, after all the years I spent with her. I watched over her because I actually hated the thought of leaving her alone, which I told to my brother (who wasn't sure if he could sleep in a room with a dying cat - and I totally understand that). He eventually decided to stay, otherwise I would have volunteered to sleep there that night. The thought of her in that condition, in a dark room, alone, slowly dying... I hated it. I hated it. I'm not being overly-dramatic; it was anathema to me. I was not going to let that happen, even if she didn't know I was there, even if she was feeling no pain and wasn't aware of anything around her. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't do it.

The next morning she was taken to the vet and put to sleep. My brother said she had begun twitching more violently, so it's for the best. And he not only slept in the room, but slept next to her on the floor, the whole night. Which... I mean, I know it's pathetic, but I'm crying a bit about right now. Lame, lame, I know. But for some reason that meant - and still means - so much to me.

So that's where I am with grief, now. I let it in; or at least, there was no barrier there to keep it out. And it was about as horrible as I expected, and since very few people enjoy feeling grief and sadness, on some level I wish that the wall was still up, that I could have been affected in the moment and quickly scrubbed it from the emotional receptors of my mind instead of tearing up at just the thought of it half a week later. But I'm also happy, because that wouldn't have been fair to Gaia, or my relationship with her, or how much happiness she brought me during a pretty miserable period of my life. Or even the annoyances when I'd trip over her in the dark and she'd meow in reproach at me and I'd shout back "what do you expect you're laying in the middle of the kitchen in the dark!"

As much as I wish it, life can't be just about the good times. Scratch that, because good times for me are in extremely short supply - it can't even be just about the non-terrible times. A lot of it is about the terrible times, the awful experiences, the waist-high lake of excrement I wade through to get to the opposite bank, though the bank keeps getting further and further away, and the lake gets deeper and deeper, and there's something in here with me, and now that I think about it I'm not sure that even is another bank, it could just be an optical illusion of the boiling sunlight reflecting off of the shit that is my life.

And now that I've engaged in my self-inflicted misery, it's time to watch a video or play a game or talk to someone, anything to get my mind off of things. Just because my life is an ocean of loss and pain, and I'm fully committed to acknowledging that, it doesn't mean I can't have a daydream of thunderstorms and northern lights and crisp mountain air, does it?

StoryTime Power Hour: Green Hull

I've been playing a lot of Sunless Sea lately, which is a... game... based around Fallen London, which is another game (apparently) / setting / something. I don't know I'm not a master on these matters. Essentially 19th century London lost a war with Hell, I think, and ended up being carried away by a mass of bats to the Neath, a gigantic underground sea with exactly the kinds of Cthuloid terrors you'd expect.

The strange part of it is that I wrote a story a few months ago - titled 'Green Hull' at random - which is remarkably similar to this, down to the steamship and sickly glow underneath the dark waters. But I really didn't begin playing this game until the last few days, and I want to stress that. It's simply coincidence!

But that has got me thinking about the story I wrote. Unlike most pieces of refuse I dredge up from the shallow scummy pond of my creativity, I think in theory it's not terrible. Written over the course of one day while already late, absolutely. Sloppily assembled? Yes. Yes it is. I also figured out exactly who the characters were (really, I only decided the narrator was the First Mate in the last third of the story) late into the story, and then didn't have enough time to go back through and retroactively add in salient moments of characterization where they really needed to go.

So it's unbalanced and wobbly, and lurches forward like a zombie with only one shoe, but I think the core there is decent enough. It's made me think about going back and editing it. But why not post this very first, very rough draft online? That way, if it does become something I can be less ashamed of, I won't ever be able to get it published. Sounds good, right? It's a good idea, right?

So sit back, relax, pop a 5-Hour Energy and enjoy the descent into hackneyed terror that is the very first draft of the future award-winning acclaimed published second draft of 'Green Hull.' Feel free to post comments here/Facebook/tumblr/twitter/Instagram/snapchat/tinder/MySpace/Skype/Livejournal/xanga/Youtube!

Green Hull

What I remember most clearly is the stillness.

The rest of the crew says otherwise; Peabody says we were stuck in the middle of a howler, pelted by Poseidon as we shivered in our overcoats and held on for our lives. Francis tells it a little different every time, but always makes mention of an island he calls The Wash, where the sun shone down always, even at the darkest hour of night – that is, when he can get to that part of the story, before he ducks his shoulders and hides inside himself and asks to be taken back to his room. The Captain says... well, I guess he doesn’t say much anymore.

What I remember is the stillness, the damnable calm before a storm we never saw coming. It’s an odd thing, a still sea. Because there’s always noise from somewhere, even if it’s just the steady slap of the waves against the hull while the engine chugs over top, a duet which is the closest a man can get to peace and quiet when he’s stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, looking down the barrel of three more weeks on the waves. But that evening it was still, like the water had forgotten how to move, or it had seen Medusa and turned to stone, only the stone was translucent glass and showed us just how far we couldn’t see into its holds.

We hadn’t seen any wind or heard any clouds for a week, as best as I can recall, and we were toasting our luck each night with Peabody’s private reserve, a little secret he kept from the Captain. Did the Captain know? I can’t say. But he never said anything about it, and as it didn’t much matter to the others, it didn’t much matter to me. I remember waking that morning to anxiety and a bowl of oats. The galley was a ghost town, the deck a mourners’ gallery. We all felt it, I think. Seven days of good fortune was a blessing, but another morning with no chop nor gale was beyond strange in that part of the sea. I checked the cargo three times before noon, ensuring the crates were stowed properly. If Lady Luck was about to deliver a comeuppance, I wasn’t going to be the one left swinging in the wind.

Around noon is when it began to change, in fact, and we felt the first breath of a breeze in days, and a fine mist rolled in to smother us whole. Or perhaps we rolled into the mist; it’s hard to say, out there on the water. The mood picked up; Francis began talking to Big Peter about some lady he had ‘made acquaintance with’ in Boston, and even the Captain relaxed a bit, giving me the wheel while went to his cabin to read. He liked his books, the Captain, and not a man in the crew but respected him for it. Hell, Peabody couldn’t even read, and I had to go over the manifest with Francis repeatedly until he could speak it from memory when we reached safe harbor.

Around six bells we came out the other end of the sea mist. Soon after the escorting breeze left us, and we chugged along to the gentle rocking of small cresting hands. I looked behind and saw the fog we had left behind sitting on the ocean, a ghostly wall we had shot through, stretching as far as I could see. The sun was muted by a layer of stationary rain – must have been some low-flying clouds, they do that sometimes – and at first the shade felt pleasant, and we picked up speed. But as it continued, I began to remember my misgivings from earlier. The filtered light began to blur the edges of what I could see, and though I can’t rightly explain it, it was impossible to see far in any direction. The Captain took the helm again, leaning forward slightly as he gripped the iron wheel, knuckles the color of bone underneath. I moved down and stalked the decks, which put the men on edge, particularly Big Peter, who was a superstitious man at the best of times. I watched him shovel coal until he spent more time glancing at me than the furnace. It beat being outside.

Yet somehow at seven bells I found myself on the main deck, staring at the water. Many who know the sea only in parting believe they have her tenor, whether the fishermen of New England or the traders of the Caribbean. I don’t doubt they know their seas, the local divinities which bring riches and ruin in equal measure. Hell, I thought I knew the sea too, before I began making cross-Atlantic voyages. But it’s all bravado, boasts you tell yourself to make sense of the ups and downs. It’s only when a man is thousands of miles from land, when the deeps below him sink fathoms upon fathoms, and the dark of the depth is so black it threatens to swallow you while you stare at it from the security of an iron tub built by men just like you in the span of the few months... it’s only then you can admit to yourself, faced with evidence which admits no denial, that you are small.

That was something like how it went, at any rate, as I stared down there with the sun fighting through overhead, when the quiet came. The ship no longer chugged and sputtered, but glided silently on her belly, a steel-gray seal flowing over ice. The men noticed at once; heads whipped around to the helm, where the Captain stood behind dark glass, his face a dim mask. Affecting nonchalance I made my way inside, where he assured me that we were still moving – the valves and meters and every piece of equipment said we were still moving, the engine still running. I ran down to the furnace to check the fire, and the instruments were right – the fire raged like an angry god; the sound roared as if to make up for the silence above. I couldn’t find Big Peter.

As I climbed the ladder from the engine room, and the fury of the fire faded behind, a madly ringing bell took its place, and I felt the ship lurch to one side. I scrambled the rest of the way up. I saw the Captain, clutching the wheel and straining to turn against the pull of whatever current we had run afoul of. I ran over and added my strength to his, and the iron circle inched starboard, squealing in protest. I glanced outside and saw the muted evening reflected in the black waters, the men holding on to the port railing as they made their way below deck.

The Captain roared ‘Slow Ahead’ to Francis, who had been ringing the bell on the bridge, and he stumbled across the floor to the chadburn. I shouted that Big Peter was missing, but I couldn’t hear myself over the dull roar which had crept up on us as we fought the ship for its life. Instead I stepped towards Francis, shoving him in the direction of the wheel while I half-jumped, half-fell down the hatch leading below deck and, clutching my bruised ribs, lumbered to the galley, where I found most of the men breaking into Peabody’s stash with abandon. I pointed at Young Donald and Jackson, disregarding Peabody’s slouching form, and screamed at them to get to the engine room.

By the time I made it back to the bridge the ship had straightened, for the most part, though the Captain still fought with the wheel. We were caught in the wake of something, whether a current or trade wind or God knows what, and he was having a hell of a time shaking us free. Asking Francis to check on the cargo, I stepped towards the bridge window, peering out at the preternatural gloom, peering right out at Big Peter.

He was tangled up in ropes at the bow. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to free himself or hold on more tightly; either way, I didn’t like his chances. I slipped on one of the overcoats hanging at the back of the bridge, and tightening a pair of rope-handling gloves, I moved to the door. It didn’t want to open, like all the winds we had avoided on our journey were here in this moment, shouldered up against handle.

As I struggled the ship lurched, leaning harder to port than before. I felt something slam into my back, driving the breath out and away, and as my vision went dark I felt the door under me give way. I managed to keep just enough wits about me to grasp the handle as whatever had hit me slipped sideways along the deck and over the rail. I never learned who it was.

I shook away the stars and my way slowly to the starboard rail, slipping here and there, saved only by a snaking cable which must have popped free during the tumult. I shouted for Peter over the roar of the bubbling surf, but even I couldn’t hear my words as they left my throat. I peered back to the bridge and saw the Captain; it looked as if the wheel was the only thing keeping him on his feet, a friend and foe combined in that terrible moment.

I made it to the rail, discarded the cable and grabbed the sturdy brace with both hands, moving along inch by inch. My feet found purchase where they could. In my slow crawl Peter grew closer, until I noticed his open mouth and wild eyes, and his throat straining with a howl which couldn’t be heard.

The ship seized, and I half-jumped, half-fell into the tangle of ropes which Peter was even now clinging to. I looked down and found my feet dangling free. The deck was nearly vertical, being sucked in by a water darker than any starless night I’ve seen before or since. In a spot about twenty feet wide, a little farther up the ship, the ocean buckled accompanied by a deafening crack, like a tree falling. The surface of the water rose up, pushing out at various places, the surrounding sea stretching to keep it contained, like a great pressure was building underneath the surface that the water itself was trying to keep hidden.

A rough hand grabbed me and held on, and I was reminded of the dull ache in my arms as Peter leaned over and shouted something in my ear. I couldn’t hear a word over the fray, but I turned and looked at him anyway. His face was pale, and shone with a greenish cast, while his arms shook, not entirely due to the exertion of keeping himself on the ship, I think; his red beard stuck wildly out in all directions and made him look more than half-mad, though I suspected I might not look much better. I pointed at the bridge, shouting myself hoarse trying to be heard. He shook his head and let go of me, tightening his grip on the ropes.

I grabbed him and stabbed at the bridge with my finger once more, my fear finally getting the better of me. I told him that we had to get to the rafts, that staying entangled on the bow meant assured death, that it was only a matter of time before the stacks flooded and the ship was gone for good, and us with it if we didn’t move right then. I don’t know if by some miracle he heard me, or if the image of my face screwed up with dread and anger convinced him to move, but he began to climb to the rail above. With once last look at the scene below, where the surface of the water now bulged outwards in half a dozen places, I pulled myself up and over the side of the ship.

On hands and knees we crawled back towards the bridge and the lifeboat beside it. The sun had all but disappeared by that time, and it was slow going over the rails in the greying gloom. Peter would stop sometimes, when the ship tilted or another massive crack echoed up the deck or sometimes for no reason at all, but with a shove and an unheard shout I’d get him moving again. About halfway to our destination smoke began to roll in from underneath us; the stacks had been flooded. If there was any chance of the ship being salvaged, it had now disappeared, and so we grimly continued, coughing and moving more slowly as our path was obscured.

At some point on our doomed sideways climb, with the ship twisting and slipping underneath us, the stacks had been pulled completely under the water, and the smoke dissipated. I looked past Peter and saw, saw that the lifeboat was gone; at that moment I lost hope, for the first time in my life. I continued forward as a mechanical exercise, my body proving more stubborn than my mind, though it, too, was approaching its breaking point, for that at point I slipped and slid down the hull, losing sight of the devilry which had all but slain the old girl who, even now, was putting up as good a fight as she could. As I hauled myself back up, telling my arms to simply let go and end it, I noticed a splash of color off to the side. I turned and the sight of the small boat sitting on the unblemished sea ushered in a wave of relief which almost accomplished what my doomed will had not. It was only a few hundred feet away, by my reckoning, and though I couldn’t see who was aboard, the waving figures told me they had spotted us.

With a loud curse I hauled myself back up onto the side of the railing. Peter hadn’t noticed my fall, and so was about a dozen feet ahead. I rushed forwards, throwing caution away as the possibility of rescue loomed large in my thoughts. I caught up to him quickly, for he had stopped moving. Directly below us was that cursed Hell-spot, and he sat on the rail, looking down. That was when I noticed the light; a flickering green glow had encompassed this side of the ship, casting Peter’s face in a sickly light. I had no time to marvel at monstrosities – I shook him by the shoulders and gestured to the salvation waiting behind him.

He didn’t look, though, or respond to me in any way. He just sat there, staring down, and that’s when I realized the light was coming from beneath the surface, shining through the edges of shattered sea. The fractured water now spread almost the width of the ship, and I had the very immediate sensation that we should be gone from there. I grabbed Peter by the collar and made to slide down the hull into the water, and make a swim for it, trusting to good fortune that we wouldn’t be dragged down in the ship’s wake.

The scar of broken ocean erupted. Light poured forth from the gap as something – something – crept out, and as if Time itself was taken aback at this perversion of the natural and sacred, it seemed like hours as it emerged and unfurled itself, luxuriating in freedom from whatever dark millennium it had come from. Then the sound came, like a scream of something that came before, and the sea fled the opening, and the ship was held in the grip of that nauseating light, and Peter fell forward, and my hand released his collar, and he dropped into the light, and I turned and slipped down the hull, and was torn up by rivets and barnacles on the way down, and I swam hard against a current trying to bring me back, and that’s all I can remember until I awoke on an English merchant vessel alongside Francis and Peabody and the Captain a week and a half later.

Like I said, it’s not the only story. Each of us have one, and that’s mine. I don’t know if it’s the right one; it doesn’t seem likely. It feels like the right one though, at least to me.

What was it? Could have been anything. A man’s mind plays strange tricks, and sailors know that best of all. Sometimes it was a great fish, a winged monstrosity called up from the ancient fathoms of time; others it was the image of a heathen god, brought forth from profane idols to assert its dominance over our race once more; and still others it’s the fetid hand of Lucifer himself, come to snatch a ship of sinners down to his infernal realm. Most often, though, it’s something that can’t be seen entirely, like it exists in the blind spot of reality, the tip of some alien iceberg; an invader of our reality, one which may not even notice the comparatively small, insignificant race of man.

Trapped in a Mind send Help

This is kind of a companion piece to my last update, where I was talking about being trapped in my own head and how you can fall into certain cycles of thought. The reason I brought that up, in fact, was due to a conversation I had with my friend/roommate and my brother, where we were talking frankly (because that's the only way we talk, Frank) about the kinds of 'bizarre' mental habits we're afflicted by. It was an eye-opening conversation in a lot of ways. This kinda stuff comes up every so often tangentially, but usually not spoken about at length in such a way. I dunno, maybe you'll find it interesting.

My roommate, for example, has problems with social anxiety. Among the various ways this manifests itself, two stood out for me at the moment (I'm sure there are many more things he did not mention). For one, I've noticed - anyone who's spent time around him has noticed - that he has a tendency to curse or grumble seemingly at random. Asking him what's up leads to a noncommittal 'ugh, nothing' or something similar. It turns out, in fact, that these moments are frequently brought on by thoughts about mistakes he's made in the past - and not big, life-changing mistakes, but minor mistakes, often social in nature, going back months and years. The way he explained it, just remembering saying something that may have made him seem foolish, or a reaction to something that he wished he had controlled better, is enough to bring his mood down. And it happens a lot. It's a mode of thought that seems to be occurring near-constantly, and is (as he has described it) the kind of stuff that you or I may find completely unremarkable, forgotten almost immediately afterwards.

Similarly, my friend explained that he often second-guesses (and third-guesses, fourth-guesses, etc.) his reactions to people when caught off his guard. An interaction as simple as noticing a person you know walking down the hallway is what he used as an example. His initial instinct may be to nod to the person. Midway through the nod, though, he may grow concerned that the person won't notice the nod, so he'll also begin to wave. Then, as he's switched tack midstream, he'll sometimes attempt to smooth that jump over with a third action (for this example, perhaps a simple 'hey').

Once the person is past, though, he will then go through and repeat all the actions he just did in miniature; as he described it, "if someone could see the whole thirty-second interaction, they would see me nod, wave, say something, then as soon as the person was past nod again, make a little waving motion, and mumble under my breath. They would think I'm insane." He does this because he's going through every action and double-checking that they were all sufficient and/or not weird/creepy/etc.

These are two great examples of the patterns of thought we can get swept away by without even really noticing it. This stuff rises so subtly and over the course of our lives that by the time we take notice of it, it's already part of us. Which means it's really, really hard to let go of, and some people don't want to let go. Because it's normal to each of us, even though we may know logically that it's kinda strange and other people don't have the same exact issues.

My brother does something similar, where he'll sometimes obsess over an upcoming interaction with people, particularly if it's important. Which isn't so strange, I suppose, except he gets very, very concerned with it, and rehearses the way it might go ad nauseum so he's not thrown. Then, when it doesn't go exactly has he plotted it out in his head, he gets thrown off his game. Now, thankfully my brother is a suave enough guy (what can I say, it's in the genes) that this usually doesn't negatively impact him much in the long run, but it is something he's very concerned about.

He also has a very strong tendency to stress out over every possible decision. We make jokes about it, actually, because it is so prevalent and often involves decisions which are just not that big of a deal, objectively speaking. He gets so many points of view from so many different people that I begin to wonder exactly how helpful any of it can be, since he almost always gets a variety of different answers. He also often does this with decisions he's already made, maybe in the spur-of-the-moment.

Much like my roommate's social anxiety issues, I feel like most of us can sympathize with some form of this behavior. It's certainly not super bizarre, and I can say from personal experience that there are aspects of these thought patterns that I share - quite a few, in fact. Because I think most of us have social anxiety to some extent, and regret decisions we may have made, and moments we reacted without thinking and wish we could take it back. God knows I do.

Speaking of myself - my favorite topic, obviously - I'll go into some more specifics, if anyone's still reading, since I'm something of an authority on the subject. I also feel a lot more comfortable sharing details about the way I think versus other people, and then judging myself accordingly.

For one, I talk to myself constantly. CONSTANTLY. When I'm alone I sound like a raving lunatic. I'll hold one-sided arguments, go through past decisions, reevaluate current plans, all of it audible to anyone with a wiretap inside my apartment (or wherever I may be). It's just the way I think things through. I mean really think things through. I have a massive tendency to go off onto tangent after tangent after tangent - now realizing this may have been an ever-present symptom of my ADHD - while speaking, and this is magnified about a thousand times worse when it's just in my head. I find it VERY difficult to think in a straight line for an extended period of time (2-3+ minutes) keeping it all up in the ol' noodle. I also often find myself thinking faster than I'm capable of processing information. Does that make sense to anyone?

Have you ever had racing thoughts? Due to a bad trip or drug reaction, or overwhelming stress or something like that? I have. Boy oh boy, that was a bad two days. If you're fortunate enough to never have experienced this, the best way I can describe it is... it's like tripping over your own thoughts. You begin thinking very, very quickly, and the problem is that they're frequently disjointed thoughts connected by only the barest thread - because by the time you're about to formulate a singular notion, you've already jumped onto three more thoughts springing from that idea, and it goes on and on like a runaway train. It is awful.

That's not how it is for me most of the time, however; or should I say, it's an extremely minor version of that very awful experience. How often do you forget what you were about to say? That's essentially what it's like - a thought was fully formed, ready to come out, but somewhere on its way out of the mouth it gets lost. Sometimes you track it down and bring it home, and sometimes it freezes to death in the woods and is eaten by raccoons. Thought-raccoons, I mean. They might stand for, ah... no, I'm not going to waste your time by trying to make this into an extended metaphor, because that would be a real shitshow.

However, when I talk to myself, it forces every part of my brain to hold on a minute. Translating the thoughts into words and then speaking of them is so much less efficient that it slows the whole process down, and in turn allows me to focus better on one idea for longer. Do I still get distracted and forget what I was talking/thinking about? Yes, yes I do. But by processing my thoughts that way, and then hearing myself speak them, I'm able to pick up where I left off soooooo much more often.

This brings me back to my last update, where I was talking about being alone trapped inside my head. One of the reasons I have always valued solitude is that it has provided me with that very opportunity to think things through more clearly. Which is extremely important for me. However, much like my brother and roommate, what may seem normal (and even useful) to me when used in moderation becomes a sort-of nightmare when left unchecked.

Because I will just keep talking. Sometimes I'll be watching a show/movie or listening to music while alone and I will pause whatever it is just because I feel the need to talk. Talk talk talk. Talk some more. And a lot of times, I'm dealing with issues I have already dealt with. They're already done! I will not have received any new information, and often will have already made a decision (if I haven't already put said decision into effect). It's just a retread of what I've thought about before. I have the same arguments with myself, come up with the same solutions, and in general just repeat myself. Over and over and over again. Depending on what I'm thinking about, I can do this for weeks or months - and a few times, for years. YEARS! Of having the same exact conversation with myself.

Taking self-inventory is important, and I feel like I spend a lot of time in introspection. And this process helps me with that, and that's super-great. But once it begins to seem obsessive to me, it becomes something I want to turn off. But I can't. It's always there, and I know it's an exercise in futility and it actually takes up a fair amount of my time, and I want to stop it. But I can't. It's extremely frustrating. I can squash it if I put my mind to it, but it always creeps back in. I'll realize I'm mumbling to myself while walking to class or washing my hands in the bathroom at work, and ffffffff I mean it's just real annoying. Real, real annoying.

Now I don't know if you've seen the link between all these worthless ramblings, but it's basically 'uselessness.' Or futility, I suppose, or whatever you might call it. It's about how your mind can take things that are, more-or-less, healthy and/or helpful - asking those you respect for input/advice, taking care of how you come across to others, giving yourself time to think matters through - and turn them into crutches, and eventually labyrinths. Run through the maze, mouse. It's the same maze every time, and we all know that, but we also know that you're still going to run through it.

On a more uplifting note, however, my point is that we all have these kinds of things. At least, this small sample size does, but I would be highly surprised if most everyone didn't have certain mental prisons they've constructed for themselves. I don't get trapped inside my head the same way my roommate does, or my brother does, or you do. But we all do get trapped up there sometimes, and it can make us feel a little crazy. And frustrated, and useless, and just bad. Bad bad bad. Sometimes we might ask other people if they ever feel the way we do, and if they say no we go 'heh alright nevermind' and drop it.

But while the people you ask may not know exactly what the dimensions of your cell is, or the material the bars are made of, or how many excrement buckets there are (are there excrement buckets? Did you luck out enough to get a functional toilet? You are literally killing me here), I can bet with a good deal of confidence that they have their own prison. Maybe you even know about it. One of them, at least. You now know about one of mine, but the mind is dark and full of terrors. There is plenty of space for a whole Panopticon in there.


I'm thinking I should start breaking these walls of text up with pictures. What do you think. Would that help with the boredom?

Masks, Performance, and Your Own Thoughts

I was speaking with my brother and Jared - my ancient friend/current roommate - the other day about thought patterns, and the odd things we each do when trapped inside our own minds. I'll go into that later in the next post, because I think it might provide an interesting look into the workings of minds that may (or may not be) similar to your own, but for now I wanted to make just a quick update about being alone vs. being around others.

My computer ate it a week or two ago, and my campadre Enoch was kind enough to let me borrow his Macbook Air while I waited for my other amigo Justin to send me his old computer. I received it a while ago, but I still haven't taken any steps to transplant the guts from the old to the new. Which you could blame on sheer laziness - certainly that's a major part - but is more a factor, I think, of the way I feel. And think, I guess.

To really get what I'm talking about you have to know the way our apartment is set up. In the very beginning, we Chose (odds/evens) to see who got the bedroom and who got the living room (essentially the second, less private bedroom). I won, because very rarely that happens, and so I have set up shop in the bedroom. Jared is out in the living room, living things up as it were, and has arranged the couches and things to be very conducive to lounging. And watching shows/movies on his monitor, of course.

Beginning this past winter, when I picked up a WiiU, I have found myself spending more and more of my time out in the living room. I even picked up a Vita so I could keep the good times rolling. And bleed even more money, of course. Now that I'm completely mobile, I essentially spend all my time out there, and only use my room for sleeping and occasionally making blanket forts.

This has been a pretty stressful semester for me, and the last few weeks in particular have found me wound pretty tight. And, finally tying this back in with the beginning of the post, I have a tendency to live in an echo chamber; that is, a place where my thoughts echo back and forth (a metaphor I drew on for a previous blog update) without really being solved or worked through. They just resound.

It's frustrating, if I'm honest, to be stuck thinking about things you've already thought about and have, more-or-less, come to a conclusion on (or the best conclusion you can, given the state of affairs). And it cycles over and over, and I almost always find myself talking to myself to keep my thoughts straight - because if I don't, I lose my thread of thought every fifteen seconds or so - and even that is difficult to keep straight and rational. Whoa, I guess I really might have ADHD. Damn you psychiatrists...!

The end result being, when I'm alone in a smaller room, my thoughts tend to get louder. They fill up the physical space, if you'll permit me yet another metaphor, and the smaller the space and the fewer people around to fill up that space with their thoughts, the more mine take control. And so I've found recently that my room, which is pretty comfortable and set up by me for me, including the heaped clutter covering every square meter, has become a space for gloom and depression. It's almost stifling, really. But something as simple as transitioning to the living room - a trip of about fifteen steps - lightens my mood significantly.

Granted, it's still not all sunshine-roses and water-daisies (?) when I'm here alone, because while being in a larger space makes me feel better, I'm still alone with my thoughts, and with no one else present they can be given a voice as much as they wish. And then I feel like a crazy person babbling to myself for forty minutes straight!

Which is why I'm actually quite thankful that I don't live alone. I mean, I always figured that I would love to live by myself - and that's true, in many, many ways. But for right now, at least, that's not my deal. Even if the thoughts filling the room when you're spending time with someone else are dark and depressing (sorry for putting you on blast here Jared), it's their darkness, and their depressing, which is a different enough shade from your own that it helps take up some space. I think this extends to whenever you spend time with another person, and I mean spending real time, not fake faux-friendly 'let's watch something and crack jokes and then leave' time that so many "friends" engage in. Which is fun in its own way, to be sure, but at least for me, when I'm feeling down, I don't have the energy to put on that mask. The performance just becomes less important to me.

So, yes. There you go. Having people who know you, who you can really talk to and be comfortable around, is absolutely awesome when you're dealing with some miserable shit. You don't have to talk to them; you can do literally what I mentioned in the last paragraph, and watch shit with them and crack jokes. But the important part is that you don't have to keep up the mask, because at some point you can't maintain the performance any longer and if you don't have anyone you can let it down around, you turn inwards and isolate yourself. Then it's just you and your thoughts, and that can be a bad combination.

Lame Poetry Detected

For the record: I don't like or respect most contemporary poetry. I've taken a class or two, and dealt with poetry a lot in an academic setting, but I am not a poet by any stretch. Sometimes, it's soothing/fun to write a poem though, so that's what I'm doing right now. It's something I wrote on my way to work and 'edited' during a break. It is not good. But it is bad, and that can be entertaining too!

Internal Combustion


A stormcloud engine drives me
Can you hear the crash of heat lightning from inside?
Can you taste the metal and oil on my tongue?
Can you smell the ozone in my speech?
It drives me, uses myself to power myself
(self-consumption)
The purer the fuel,
the hotter the burn,
the brighter the flame
Now, the fire burns white
How long can I endure
Until nothing but cinders remain?

"Allison Lost" and Revision Notes

So I was going to post about the soothing effect the Icelandic Sagas have on my nerves and the pros (and cons) of formulaic - or as I prefer, highly-structured - literature, but then I remembered I said that my next update would be more entertaining than 'not at all.'

Instead, you get the most recent draft of my continually-revised and reviled short story "Allison Lost," which is just the worst story I've ever written. Emotions are hard for me to write, and even more so when I originally wrote this story (I think the first draft was spring 2014?). Of course, a lot of WH people have read this before - or at least a very similar version of it - so if they stumbled upon this trash heap, that wouldn't be any fun.

Which is why I have chosen to also include the notes I sent to my workshop leader when submitting this as my final portfolio. Interesting? Not really. But it does give you a sense of how I approached the revision of a story I really, really dislike on a personal level. And maybe that's of interest to someone. I don't know, I don't judge whatever floats your bizarre boat. Also, sorry about the lack of tab formatting; that's what happens when you copy-paste into a box on the internet I suppose.

And so here it is:

Allison Lost

Later Johnathan Johnson would remember that moment. It wasn’t the first time he saw her. It wasn’t the last. But that day, sitting on the cold slate steps, staring out at the frosted yard and the road beyond the hill, he remembered in perfect detail. 

Suddenly he was back there with her, could smell the sharpness of the air, taste a hint of snow on his tongue along with the lingering flavor of the Scotty-O’Mally’s bar he had had for breakfast. Mrs. Treacher hadn’t caught them outside yet. 

“I told the counselor I wanted to be a painter,” John said. His breath formed ephemeral white shadows in the air.

“What did she say?” Allison asked. She was busy drawing on a step with a piece of chalk, one she had stolen from an empty classroom.

“She said I was being silly. She said that no one paints anymore, and I should spend more time on math.”

The short piece of chalk broke in Allison’s mittened fingers. She left both halves lying where they were. Settling next to John, she laid a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s not silly, Johnny. Don’t listen to her. She’s just mad that she looks like a toad.”

They both laughed.

# # #

When John was seven years old, his class took a field trip to the art museum in the City. He stopped in front of one of the paintings for a moment. His friends and classmates continued past. Most did not bother to look up from their whispered conversations.

“What are you lookin’ at?” one called back. Their group slowed as they noticed John lagging behind.

“It’s a road and a field, and those are people and there’s a big church, and-”

“Fields aren’t blue,” another said, a tinge of childish contempt in his voice. “And roads aren’t all yellow like that. And those people don’t even look like people, they’re just far-off blobs.”

John mumbled something in response. His friends shrugged and moved on.

# # #

Only when she moved up beside him at the railing did he really notice her. It was one of the girls from his class; he didn’t quite remember her name. Amy? Emily? Lauren?

“It’s pretty, huh,” she said after a few moments. “You can almost imagine you’re back there.”

“Back where?” he asked. He realized that he was annoyed; this girl, whatever her name was, had intruded on something.

“France, I think,” she said.

“It doesn’t look like France,” he said immediately. “Fields aren’t blue, and the people are blobs.”

“It’s not supposed to look like France, it’s supposed to feel like France, I think,” she said, suddenly sounding uncertain. John had never heard something like this, and paused for a second to digest its meaning.

“Oh.” 

“My name is Allison,” she said. He peeked at her from the corner of his eye, but she didn’t take her eyes off of the painting.

“John.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he remained silent. She was silent with him, and they both simply looked at the painting for a while. That’s how Mrs. Jones found them, half-an-hour later.

She took each by the hand - John’s a little more roughly than Allison’s - and began to pull them towards the exit of the exhibition tunnel. John resisted for a moment, tugging back, and Mrs. Jones looked down, scowling.

“Wait, Mrs. Jones,” he insisted. “The painting? Do you know?”

She sighed, and looked up at the piece. “It’s called - uhm - Geelee Blanch - Ate Dela Saint Martin.” Her voice wobbled as she tripped over the pronunciation. “Happy now, Mr. Johnson?”

He saw Allison smile at him from the other side of Mrs. Jones.

* * *

John doesn’t like to think about what came before. Before the treatments.

Passing headlights catch stacks of paintings, spreading different wavelengths ricocheting around the room. Green is the color that appears most tonight; guess he had her on his mind. He wonders what ever happened to her. Then he remembers. John rolls over in his bed.

# # #

“Hello, John. My name is Doctor Floyd.” He was tall, John remembered; even now, when he can’t remember his face, he still looms large and thin.

“I’ve brought a gift for you, if you would accept it. It’s the kind of work we’d like you to do for us, one day. I do hope you enjoy it.” He wiped his glasses - had he always had glasses? - and moved to speak with John’s parents.

Two large men carried in a tall, flat box, and placed it just inside the doorway. Within moments John had it open. Inside was the framed painting which had caught his eye four months earlier at the museum. Inside was a card: “Gelee Blanche - Ete de la Saint-Martin, by Alfred Sisley,” along with a certificate of authenticity. It was, he later discovered, the original.

# # #

“John,” said Dr. Floyd, “do you know why your government wants your help?” John responded with silence, as often did around the doctor.

“Tell me John, what do you think of my outfit today?”

“It’s gray,” John said. “Really gray.”

“Go on. What do you mean ‘really’ gray?” John began to panic. He looked down at the bright tile floor, then up to the equally bright ceiling. Everywhere he looked he could see Dr. Floyd gazing at him expectantly.

“Don’t worry about getting in trouble. I want your honest opinion.”

“It’s lifeless.” The words popped out of his mouth, and unleashed a torrent of other, related words, rearranging themselves at the last moment before they squeezed through the doorway and tumbled into the open air. “You look like someone sucked all the color out of you with a straw. Like you don’t really exist. You feel like a shadow, Doctor Floyd.” He clapped his hands over his mouth as the last words rang throughout the bare white office.

“What do you mean I feel like a shadow, John?”

“I... I’m not sure, Dr. Floyd,” John stammered. “I just said it but I don’t know what it means, really.” Floyd leaned back in his chair, writing quickly in one of his many brown notebooks.

“You see John, that is why your country needs you. This treatment is something to help you - a program designed to help people like you bring out their full potential. It will demonstrate just how important you are to this country’s future.”

“What’s it do?”

“Nothing that wouldn’t happen eventually, John. It will just speed up the process a little.” Dr. Floyd smiled at him; John wondered if it was supposed to convey warmth.

“Sir, I mean, I don’t think what I do is all that special.” He wrung his hands together in his lap. “There’s an-” He stopped. Dr. Floyd arched an eyebrow at him. John had almost told him about Allison.

* * *

John lays awake. He’s facing the window, but staring through it, to somewhere else. He pretends he can see the stars, though no one in that part of the world has seen stars in decades. His eyes remain dark, and reflect the darkness surrounding him. Within those reflections are paintings, dozens - maybe hundreds - of them, stacked atop each other like pallets. The batch from the past month. Someday soon his brother Mark will come by to help move them; he tells John that he donates them to a gallery downtown. John is fairly sure he destroys them. Not that it matters. They weren’t important anymore. They were finished.

# # #

“You two again? Do I have to write you both up?”

“No Mrs. Treacher. Sorry, Mrs. Treacher,” John and Allison said in unison. They both got up and dusted off the seats of their pants. Allison was first inside, her scarf billowing behind her. Before she disappeared, she turned and smiled at him, the gap-toothed grin which so often shattered the dismal brown gloom of Mt. Sinai Elementary. 

In later years he became used to seeing her leave, always like a breeze sighing through an open window, even when she was angry. Even when she was frightened.

* * *

Then she really was gone, with her green scarf trailing behind, always the last to wave goodbye. In John’s memory she always had a scarf on, though that doesn’t make any sense.

Now that I think of it, John thinks, laying on the twin bed in his old blue room, the paint long faded to gray, that scarf was really more a forest green.

He has never remembered that before.

He rolls over, straightening his undershirt. The calendar in the corner of the room says July 2048; John hasn’t touched it in years, but he liked the way the word ‘July’ is written. The mattress is bare and dirty, and he pulls his single, soft yellow sheet tighter against the chill from the open window. Like every night, he considers getting up and shutting it. Like every night, he does not.

The cold gray fog prowling the streets outside reminds him of snow standing in the shadow of a mountain. John used to take Allison up to the mountains every year, so she could ski and he could try and rest, though the scenic blues and greens were often too much to ignore. The last time they had gone – they must have been thirty-two – may have been the last time he had seen her happy. 

Before that she had always been quick with a joke, always had a giggle ready to lighten the mood. John had needed that as the treatments intensified, and Camp got tougher. Looking back on it, it seems to him like her light had shined brighter as his shadow grew darker. He had been worried when they moved in together, that the things which seemed to so upset his family might put her off too. They hadn’t, at first.

Then it changed. The program was defunded; the other students had been showing eccentricities, they said, but John had noticed the ones who disappeared. Even once he had started seeing the world as runny paint on a filthy canvas, he had noticed them, spoken to them. They had frightened him.

He lost his government stipend once the program was officially shuttered. They still provided him with the drugs, but he didn’t have the money to help pay rent. John began to sell his work, opening a small studio downtown, but his style ran against modern trends, and his income was sparse. Allison hadn’t complained, but John was sure it’s what drove them apart. Not the days spent isolated in his studio, or the way he’d sometimes forget things – her birthday, their anniversary, a relative’s wedding; her name. Not even the violence, though he didn’t remember the violence. He never had and he never would.

John doesn’t quite remember when she had left, but isn’t sure he had noticed right away. He does remember the letter she had written him; she knew he wasn’t good at listening to words. Allison had asked if he remembered the other students, how some of them had scared him. She said he scared her in the same way, but John knew she was overreacting. She often did.

 # # #

By the time he turned ten, John’s friends wouldn’t speak to him anymore.

Allison Lost Notes

Soooo... this one. The name of the story has changed so many times – now it’s called “Allison Lost,” which I think is worlds better than the last few but still not quite there – and the body of the story also has changed a great deal. It’s probably the most any story of mine has changed from first draft to most recent, though of course I’ve revised it more than any other story (I think), so that makes some kind of sense.

I thought I was completely sick of it, honestly, and I kind of was. Which is why I’m glad I took some distance on it and didn’t have to think about it for a month or two. I still wasn’t happy working within just the confines of the story as it stood. I know we talked about this, and you suggested revising a scene (which I kinda did?), but I’ve known from the very beginning that the story just isn’t finished; the reason people have such a hard time determining the conflict and the real plot is because I had set it up as a longer story and just never finished it. Even if I had finished it and then still stripped it down to its current length, I feel like it would have been much better, since I’d have a start and end point.

So, I began to revise a scene towards the end, and about halfway through I realized I was just adding stuff. So I changed the scene that stuff was added to – I didn’t really want to make a whole new scene for it, at least not right now – and worked through some of that. It’s really just an exposition chunk, like a brick, and I’m not at all sure that it’s where it should be right now. Or even if I shouldn’t break it up into tinier pieces and sprinkle them around the story. But I do feel confident with the way the plot is now, and it provides a lot more structure for me to work within. Maybe it could go earlier, to have that looming over the whole thing...

Either way, this addition is (like in my other story) the way I found to wring something new and interesting out of it. You can’t always add things to a story for a revision, I know, but at least the case of these two stories, I wanted them to approach the original ideas I had for them. In some form or fashion, anyway. Now that it’s all on the page, I can mutilate them as I see fit, but just having them down is a relief.

So, back to this story specifically. I italicized everything but the scene I was editing/adding to, to make it easier to see. I also used a fair number of footnotes to ramble as I am wont to do. Again, this is by no means a finished draft, but the story – like the actual plot – is coming pretty close to being set in my mind. I can’t help but think, now, that keeping the brevity of the piece but focusing it more on the later years – which are the ones that would have the most conflict – might be a pretty good idea.

The Little Man (or Woman)

I've been feeling better lately. Mentally, I mean. And physically, too, I guess, since I'm just getting over another Illness (always the same thing for the same duration). Mentally is the most important, though, and without going into much detail about it I'll just say that my head hasn't really been screwed on straight for the past two weeks or so.

Which is fine; we all have little breaks like that. Things can send us into a loop of regret, confusion, and self-flagellation. But what I found is it also leads to a lot of introspection, and self-evaluation, and if you can control that - and medication helps, absolutely - then you may come out of it a more balanced, mentally sound individual. I like to think that's what happened to me.

Of course that might be the crazy talking, though I haven't yet taken to peeling shrimp in my bathtub to prepare for the promised dolphin plague. And it may be short-lived; it's hard to know. I would like to send out a beam of good-vibes to my friends and family, most of whom have been very supportive during this ordeal. No, I don't really believe in beams or good-vibes or whatever battiness really positive people say, but hey, it's a way to express yourself when you can't think of anything else to say. So, again, thanks.

In the past two weeks I've really dug down deep to understand what's important to me. Strangely enough, the answer has been people. A surprise to be sure, as I'm not the biggest fan of people in general, and I tend to value my alone time extremely highly. I know how to make friends though - and keep friends, if I may say - and I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good friend in return, outside of my inability to drive and general pathetic state. When I say 'people,' I'm not talking about in general, because - like I said - I think most people are pretty garbage and can't stand to be around many various types of human being. But certain people - and I think they know who they are - I've come to care for deeply, in a variety of different ways.

Let me fill you in on a secret you likely already know: caring about people suuuuuuucks. It sucks! It leads to insecurity and jealousy and fear and embarrassment and weird bizarro-situations where you want to help someone but you can't. Or you want to listen to someone but you won't. Or - God forbid - you want to repay someone for all they've done, but they still won't let you in. These are things that happen with people you care about no matter how long you've cared about them - a week, a month, a year, ten years, your whole life - and every time it happens it makes that little man (or woman) inside squirm and whimper. Perhaps it's just a little whimper, or a small shriek in the darkness, but that darkness is your mind and it is big and cavernous and reverberates. The acoustics there... you don't even know.

I got to a place where I couldn't decide whether I could stand the noise anymore. Because it is easier - it is so much easier - to wall up that part of the cavern. Let the little man (or woman) scream himself hoarse in the black. So that's what I did, because I'm always a fan of the easy way out - even if the easy way out seems hard, because the hard way out is a million times worse. I know others who have made the same choice. I know people who are making that choice every day.

The problem, which is something that age has revealed to me in all of its twisted malformed glory, is that the shrieking doesn't stop. The cries and the throes don't cease, and in that small space they grow larger and larger until they start forming cracks in the wall. So you can build another wall; that's what I did. And another, and another, and another after that. Again, even this rebuilding is far easier than letting it loose, so you keep the little man (or woman), who at this point seems more like a monster than anything else, in its cave. It's a bit of work, but it's doable.

But the more you rebuild the wall, the more space the little monster gets. One day you notice that nice, quiet dark that you've valued for so long - let's say over ten years, why not - is much, much smaller. And it's no longer a comforting darkness, but a frightening one; you become trapped in your own mind; always wary of the next crack in the wall, always counting the remaining space. It can consume you, until you don't have energy left for anything else but repairs and measurements and worry.

And sometimes you decide to let the monster out, and sometimes it forces its way out, spitting on your best intentions to keep it restrained. It was a bit of both for me, this past year, and I can tell you truthfully that the tears in the wall from my side - the side that was just me sitting huddled in the dark - were much less painful than the fractures caused by the monster. Which, if nothing else, I think, is a good thing to learn.

Even now I'm not sure how I feel about the monster getting out. Actually, let me go back to using man (or woman); because when I met that part of myself again, I saw that it was not the monster I feared it was. I hadn't seen it in a very, very long time, and had convinced myself that it really was a monster. Why else would I have walled it up? Why else would it sound so horrible and cause such pain?

The answer is that the little man (or woman) is caring, and vulnerability, and legitimate concern for others. And every time he was hurt, I was hurt, and he and I were one and the same. But if you split him (or her) off and place him alone and wall him up, then he's not you anymore. But you're really not you anymore either. And I know this sounds really cliche and, well, probably stupid, but it's the truth. I was perfectly pleased with who I became - sans little man - and didn't really want him back. Like I said before, I had hit the wall a few times with a hammer, but I never committed to absolute demolition. Because those swings were painful.

So I still am not sure how to feel. It's all a little too new, and I am not a very smart man. The little man - manster? - is free now, and he's making up for lost time. I feel a lot of things that I didn't before. Sometimes I hate him for it, because a lot of what I feel is pain. Other times, though, I think maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's good to be able to legitimately care, and feel, and not be constantly surrounded 24/7 by a shield of irony and sarcasm and bitterness. Or maybe the little man set free will cause me to fail out of school, or do something incredibly stupid and/or reckless, and regret not binding him tighter.

I really have no idea, and that is the absolute truth. It's not as safe with him running amok in the darkness now. I'm not as safe. But I also have a lot more room to think, and that has to be worth some pain.