Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Really Bad Day

I always liked this book when I was a kid, and it was kind of odd realizing this morning I hadn't read it in about thirty years.

Perhaps I should, because after how yesterday went, it might lend me some good perspective...

...or get me looking into how to immigrate to Australia, whichever comes first.

Because I live in a world where being completely open about such things is still considered an absolute no-no as it might alarm people into some form of action and/or reaction, I'll put this as succinctly as I can.

Yesterday sucked. A lot. So much so that the fact I'm even sitting here typing this out is not something that was guaranteed by this time yesterday.

It sucked because it was one of those really, really bad days where my mind goes to the places I try to keep it from going to, and it decides it's the perfect place to set up camp.

When I got up yesterday morning, I didn't feel quite right to begin with. I'd gotten some decent sleep, but as is my custom, didn't feel like I got any actual rest. Aware but undeterred, I ate breakfast, took a long hot shower and just tried to take care of myself. No real pushing. No forcing the issue. Just do what I've always done. Ride it out with the understanding that it's just temporary and I'll be okay.

Except by mid-afternoon, I wasn't okay. I was anything but okay.

I knew this wasn't just going to be an "ordinary" sort of bad day when I was trying to get more work done on my novel. Considering I don't have many more chapters to go, there is a definite feeling of excitement and accomplishment that is attached to each new page I finish. However, as is often the case in creating a story, I discovered I had a loose thread in an earlier chapter I needed to tend to first, so I can continue with the direction I was heading in later on.

I'd bet if you asked any reputable writer how many times they'd had to deal with this, virtually all of them would admit it's happened more than they can count. It's part of the deal, especially in a first draft when you're just throwing mental spitballs at a wall and hoping they stick well enough to make a relatively coherent picture.

But as I sat down and got to work, rereading the section of scene I needed to polish up, I came to a rather bothersome conclusion that I wasn't entirely sure of the motivations of my antagonist. And because this is a rather pivotal moment in the story, that is fairly alarming discovery to make. I racked my brain for about an hour trying to see if I could figure it out, but nothing seemed to fit right, and the big yellow snowball which had started rolling downhill when I woke up kept right on going and getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now this is the point where I should probably inform those of weak constitutions or who possess the opinions that anyone dealing with a "mental illness" or such "imaginary flim-flam" is trying to garner sympathy to probably go back to watching reality TV or whatever it is you do to escape from actual reality.

The rest of my afternoon and evening consisted of me finding things to do that kept my mind focused on something, ANYTHING, other than seeking confirmations and justifications for why this world and everyone in it sucks so much that it doesn't warrant my being here any more.

Six continuous hours of trying to not engage in an argument with myself about how much I hate people, how they take for granted lives I would gladly detonate a sun to possess, why everything they do is right and everything I do is wrong and how pointless it is to try to convince them to care at all when the evidence is clear that they both can't and shouldn't, so why even bother putting up any more of a fight?

Sure I could've called someone, but what am I really going to say? "Hey, sorry to take you away from whatever life-affirming thing you're in the middle of at the moment, but I'm in the midst off a stage three mental nuclear meltdown. Can you spare a few minutes until I can isolate the problem and get the reactor back on-line?"

When I was younger and was in that boat, I did what most people do and called my family. The usual answer I got was, "Suck it up and deal and quit being so melodramatic about it."

If you've ever found yourself in that sort of a spot, I'm truly sorry. If you haven't, well...let's just say it's anything but a picnic.

At that point, I decided it was best to just unplug and take the rest of the day off. I shut off Facebook, stepped away from my novel, went out and treated myself to some sushi and played Skyrim until I was yawning so badly that I could barely stay awake. Figuring I'd be able to just collapse into bed and pass out thanks to the extra shot of Prozac I took at the height of my lowest, I actually was ready to fall asleep about three hours earlier than I usually do.

And I still didn't finally get there until after midnight.

Even though I didn't touch a drop of alcohol, which I would've probably been in the right to do under the circumstances, I woke up this morning feeling like I had a hell of a hangover. My head was pounding and I had a hard time seeing straight, but I know for a fact that one cannot get drunk on almond milk.

Today I'm feeling a little better, and given the nice weather outside, I'm going to utilize it later on for a workout before hopefully getting back into my book and finishing up what I need to get done.

And yes, I am looking into getting into see someone about this. As I am on the Washington State plan under the ACA, I can do so and talked to them about it at the end of last week, in fact. At which time, they told me I should expect a call back soon for available people to go talk to.

I'd like to say it's been a while since I've had a day like this, but it's not. They may not be as completely bad as this, but I do have them. A lot. For the record, I don't wake up every morning in the hopes that I'll have one on the docket for that day either. I'd much rather just have a "normal day" everyone else I know has of getting up, going to work, coming home or spending time with friends and family and knowing that the next day will be a repeat of that, instead.

 I don't think anyone should have to withstand with days like this...even in Australia.

Another Year Older

So I realized this morning that April is quickly on it's way out the door for another year, which means May is fast approaching, and with it...my birthday.

I honestly don't know when I stopped really enjoying the idea of turning a year older, but as my 37th approaches, I realize that it's probably been about ten years at least since I really felt like "celebrating" my coming into this world.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not the result of the stereotypical "Midlife Crisis" or fear of getting old either. I understood a long time ago that there's no way to stop the progression of life we all go through, and I made up my mind that I was not going to be like people I knew who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting they're not 21 anymore.

*Editorial Note - In fact, I remember waking up on my 30th birthday, rolling out of bed and feeling the same cracks and pops in my bones that I had the day before, so it was far from an Earth-shattering revelation that my 20's were now over.

This is where I was when I turned 36, choosing to run away and get lost for the whole week in a city I'd never seen before rather than stay home and try to find some arbitrary way to commemorate the occasion. But when it came time to actually acknowledge it, I didn't really do all that much other than treat myself to lunch in San Francisco's famous Chinatown (which ended up not being all that great, truth be told) and then going to a sleepy little dive not too far from where I was staying in San Jose called Singlebarrel and having a drink in a comfortable chair in a corner of the very dark space, drowning out the surrounding chatter and conversation with my iPod and scribbling down everything I was running from in my notebook.

Had I a job and the means to do so now, I probably would do the same thing and run away to somewhere else I haven't been to before, of which there are a great many places. Before I left last year, I posted a rather morose note to my friends telling them that I was, in a sense, doing them a favor by taking off and not having to go through the arbitrary paces of wishing me a "Happy Birthday," and for a while now, I've tried convincing them to treat it, (and I've told them this with absolute sincerity) as just another day and to really ignore it.

So why would I do that? Why marginalize, trivialize and disregard the fact that I made it through another year? As I sit here and rack my brain for an honest answer, this is what I've been able to come up with.

My continued existence isn't worth celebrating and even if it was, I honestly, truly, don't remember how.

Now I can already hear the comeback to that, "How could you possibly think such a thing?!" which is a perfectly valid question and also worth answering.

The answer is that looking at my life and what it is now from standing in the middle of it reinforces that opinion a little more everyday. I'm unemployed and frantically looking for a job wherever I can find one with next to no success. I'm single with absolutely no interest in dating or finding a girlfriend because my divorce and everything that came after eradicated my instincts and ability to trust either what I feel or the intentions whoever I might be interested in. I'm an absentee father to a brilliant little boy who is everything that I was at his age and I'm desperate not to corrupt him in the same way I was by my parents and the life of growing up in a broken family.

My days are spent grappling with extreme self-doubt and a total lack of both self-confidence and self-worth and even on the one when I go to sleep feeling good about myself, there's those inevitable swings back the other way and I consider my entire life to this point to have been completely and utterly wasted.

Now if I had a surging career, a nice house, less stress and all the things I've wanted, I'm sure I wouldn't feel this way. Those weren't the cards I was dealt so I'm trying to make good with what I have.

From my view, which is all I have to really go on here, there's only one legitimately positive reason why I should celebrate my birthday this or any other year.

Because despite all that shit and everything I've had to fight off, everything I want so badly to forget, and everything I want more than anything in the world to change...I'm still here.

Try as it all has to put me in the ground, and there have been many, MANY times where it was all but assured, it hasn't.

That has to count for something, I hope.

Love Thyself

The world seems to be full of epiphanic musings like this. I know because I've heard a great many of them in my life from people who've tried to convince me of what it is I'm lacking in order to get through this lingering state I've been in.

To be clear, I'm not the sort of person who believes that such advice is a terrible thing. On the contrary, being able to see yourself for who you are and accepting that reality isn't a bad thing at all, I'd like to think.

The issue comes when your self-image is predicated upon a foundation that was designed for one thing.

Maximizing self-loathing and self-hatred.

From an early age, I learned that being accepted by those around me would probably be the hardest thing I could accomplish. After all, going to school was a daily routine of degradation, abuse and rejection for a myriad of reasons.

If it wasn't the clothes I was wearing, it was the way I talked. If not that, then it was that I was smaller for my age. If not that, it was because I was smarter than most of the kids I was in class with and actually interested in learning. If not that, it was because I was descendant of a low-income family and not an upper middle-class one.

The one thing I never really understood is why it was that I became the constant target for such ridicule. I wasn't asking for it and I certainly wasn't encouraging it. I just wanted to be left alone, to have friends and to fit in, but it didn't happen because I was so different than "the norm."

As I went through all the calamitous crap I had to deal with in my late teens and early 20's, the level of self-abnegation I felt truly skyrocketed to where it's been ever since. No one ever walks out of a prison cell with a high opinion of themselves. They just don't. Why? Because that's not what it's designed for. Nor is the system which operates it.

The lie of this country is that we have a rehabilitative system for dealing with those who run afoul of the law for whatever reason. The truth is it's actually built around retribution. At no point did any of the shrinks I had to see ever work on building positive self-reinforcement. Not once. All it was, every week for five years was pointing out the worst parts of who I was perceived to be and hammering home how I could never have a "normal" life because there was something so wrong with me that I was no longer permitted to just be a regular person.

The severity of my self-loathing is not a sporadic occurrence. It has grown and been cultivated over a long period of time dating back nearly 30 years now and in that time, I have tried to figure out ways to circumvent that runaway train of thought and try seeing myself in a better light. Some days, I can, but it never lasts very long because there's always a trigger that sets my self-perspective back on what it deems to be the proper course.

Going through divorce and all that came after certainly didn't help either. If anything, it just reinforced the position I've always had.

Nobody loves you, Dev, and they're never going to no matter how badly you want them to. If they can't or don't, then there's really no point in you trying to either.

It's a vicious, self-sustaining cycle. You can only be accepted if you accept yourself, but it becomes harder to accept one's self if no one else wants them around either.

At this point, my self-awareness is so hypersensitive that I know both who and what I am probably better than I ever have before. I know what I've been through, the things I've achieved and overcome and every mistake I've made, be they trivial or otherwise. I live with memories, feelings and actions that I will always regret and wish I could change. I still have dreams for things I want to do before this life ends.

Love is an instinctual feeling we acquire from the moment we're born. Hate is something that is taught to us through outside influences. I know this because I only have to look at my son to realize that even at his age of three, he still sees the world in a totally different spectrum than I do, and I remember how at that age, I felt the same way. I didn't hate anyone and I certainly didn't hate myself by any measure.

But I still do now. I have for nearly the entirety of my life since. For me, it's much easier to exhibit love in an external capacity than an internal one and to me, it's no less real or valid. If someone ever hears me say the words "I love you,"to them, I honestly can't be any more sincere.

I can't because they're three words I've never, ever, been comfortable with saying to myself.