Am I a secret genius? The answer is probably 'yes.'

I struggle with anxiety and depression and a sinister form of ADHD which only appeared after the other two beasts had been beaten into a sort of submission. It's no great secret, really, and while I don't recall if I've mentioned this specifically in past updates, I think it's pretty obvious from the way I write.

For the most part, I acknowledge and understand that, and I try to reign myself in when I begin to go off of the deep end. But there are other times, times when I begin to obsess over a problem - or a potential problem, as the case usually is - and there's... there's nothing I can do about it. It's coming down the highway like a spastic caravan and I am powerless to stop it and the people who can stop it are drunk and high and oblivious to the danger and SMASH it's all over. I'm left standing on the sidelines, stooping to pick up the smoking wreckage the best I can while I drag along a leg which is all but useless now that it has eighteen pieces of shrapnel embedded into the bone.

It used to be easy for me to write this off as a manifestation of my ever-present anxiety and tendency towards pessimistic outcomes. The thing is, when I do talk to others about these situations, they agree with me! They agree with analyses and predictions. They just think I let it get to me too much.

Sometimes I have to talk to people uninvolved in whatever situation is going on to make sure I'm not crazy. Because sometimes.... sometimes you have to make sure you're not crazy. I know I have to, constantly. You raise a hypothetical and you give enough oblique facts to let the person make a somewhat-rational conclusion. Or you talk to someone who's close enough to the situation to see all the moving pieces but far enough away - eternally unlike myself - to be clear of the blast when it occurs. Then the other person agrees with you, as long as the 'you' in this case is actually me.

But they always give the same advice: don't let it affect you so much. It doesn't really involve you, don't let it get to you, try to just forget about it. You've done your best to minimize the damage from the impact and resulting multiple explosions, try to be content with that. They do understand why I can't do that, bless their hearts, but in a very general way.

I'll tell you the truth, reader: I think I might be a secret genius. Because - and I swear this is true - sometimes it seems like no one else can see the writing on the wall except me. Which, y'know, is insane, because it's so very clear, and at first blush I am not that intelligent. Yet here we are. When this happened when I was younger, I kept my mouth shut; I assumed that the adults knew what was going on and understood something I did not. It took several large disasters for me to realize that, no, they don't understand something I don't. They don't even understand a few things I do. With that realization came no power, however, and I was still born away on a mudslide of others' choreographed mistakes. Slippin' and slidin' all over creation.

Now, I'm a little older. Slightly wiser (?) and definitely slower, in absolutely every way. But I'm still running into the same old thing. I'm still seeing collisions before they appear. The left knee tweaks and the right eye twitches: a storm's on the way, an it's going to be a bad one. Those who know me, believe me. Those who don't, don't, and I pull and drag at their clothing and shout doomsday predictions to closed ears and vacant homes. They're standing in the fields, hands shading their eyes as they look out toward the sun, blind to the winds bullying them and the storm clouds above their shadows on the ground.

I don't know why I care so much. I try not to care so much. When I fail, I do my best. That should be good enough for me. But it doesn't prevent the tragedy, ever. So it isn't.

Sometimes you get Weird Feelings (Part 2/2)

2) I really struggled thinking about this post. I know what I want to say, but I'm not sure how much detail I should divulge. In the end, I chose to be careful while also sharing what I'm thinking, because this really only involves me. So, that makes sense, right??

I was recently invited to a party. Now I am not a party person, dear reader - I do not number myself among the 'party people' so often invoked among the youth. I whole-heartedly prefer an evening with seven-eight good friends having a good time than going to hang out among thirty screaming college kids, only four or five of which I know. I'd have to be really drinking heavily to enjoy that kind of thing, and that sort of alcohol is expensive. I'm not made of money.

Now I'm sure my invitation is more-or-less a formality; people know I'm not a partying type, despite how entertaining and fun-to-be-around I am virtually all the time. Am I a big hit at parties? Always. But I've also grown out of that phase, and I no longer have to be at a party to be the center of a group's attention. I'm a MOBILE party! So I said maybe, as I usually do - because I really do think about it - and that was that. Leaning towards probably not going, I'm sure I'll be busy that night, but hey, never say never, right?

Then I checked back, and (as this is Facebook and on Facebook everything is always everywhere), I found that someone I really do not want to see in-person - certainly not in a party environment - is going. You know what that means? That means I'm definitely not going. That means I actually can't go.

And in the long run that's fine, because it's unlikely I would have attended anyway. But I'm angry. I'm angry at this person, for no real reason - I can't expect people to stop having doing things because I don't like them to - and I'm angry at myself. Not for choosing not to go because of it; I think that's a fine choice, and I would stand by it regardless of any other factors. No, I'm angry with myself because I still got upset over it, and thus I didn't have a choice. Or don't have a choice, I should say. My hand is forced; and even though if I had no emotional reaction to this situation, and was making decisions completely clearheaded, I would choose the same course of action, it's still not okay; the absence of choice still really bothers me. I don't want to be around this person, particularly not there, and that's an objective decision; my emotional response is "no no no no no not good don't no no way uh-uh nope," and that is not.

And atop everything else, I feel angry that I'm still getting even somewhat worked up, because I thought all the feelings were gone and away (thank God). It's been a really peaceful and anxiety-free week or two, and what a relief that has been after the past few months. I guess it takes a little longer for those ghosts to completely fade away, which is frustrating. Where's my self-neuralizer? Plz, MIB, plz.

Crisis Alert!

This is going to be an extremely short update. I just want to let you know, dear readers, that I remain alive and... well, not 'well,' but alive. There is a lot of chaos in the air right now, and to say that emotions are running high across a wide variety of spectrums is an understatement. I'm concerned for more than a few people, and (at least it seems like) more than a few people are concerned about me. It's a very concerning time, if I'm honest. Then of course there's the requisite confusion of the Self which goes along with all of that.

A lot of existential questions and conversations. A lot of total blanks, half-truths, and non-answers. I feel like I'm regressing. More on these and other topics when it's not almost four a.m. I had a nice, interesting topic planned out and partially written, but I'm not sure it's the thing to talk about now. Strike while the iron is hot, I suppose.

I've been doing a lot of creative things, lately. Which is good: it helps keep the crazy under control. Or, at least, I think it does. Today a chapter of my life will be finished, signed, and sent out for publication. I thought I'd feel more liberated; instead, I just feel sad. Sadness seems to be a recurring trend these past few months. Much less fun than the ambivalence I had courted for so long. Regression, I tell you.

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?