Ghost

Let me get this out of the way up front.

I dearly wish I could just skip today.

Not because it happens to be a Thursday or because the weather's not particularly wintery in this part of the world, even though climate change is still just a myth or political propaganda, apparently...

No. I dread the coming of December the 27th, because emotionally, it's by far the hardest and most painful day of the year for me on the Gregorian calendar.

Editorial Note: And by comparison to some of the other 364 days I'd like to skip over...that says a lot.

If my disdain for today was for a singular reason, I suppose that would be one thing and for the majority of my life, it was. On this day, twenty-nine years ago, I got on a plane and left my home in New England for the West Coast.

It took until 2016 for me to finally get back home for what I'd hoped would be for good, and during that whole 3,006 mile journey across the continent, I'd allowed myself to finally start the process of letting that go.

It wasn't easy, I can tell you that right now. For most of that week and even after I'd finally stopped moving, I argued with myself about whether I really could or not. But after all I'd gone through in those intervening years, I figured having made it back on my own terms and with the intention of starting over, then it was necessary.

I wish that I could leave it at that...but I can't. As I said, there's more than one reason why this day has become so hard for me to get through every year.

That other is that it's the birthday of the woman pictured above.

Who is she? A long time ago, she was one of my best friends. Now...for lack of a better term, she's a Ghost. One of many I have to live with, whether I want to or not.

The last time we saw each other was over a year ago, when we were both living in Boston. It was the first time we'd been in the same space together since about 2011 and to say it was an awkward meeting is a gross understatement.

Why had it taken so long? The simplest, non-bullshit explanation is that I fucked up. Badly. I broke my own cardinal rule and let myself get too emotionally attached by falling for her at a time when I'd just closed the book on a long and what I realize now was an incredibly toxic marriage a few months earlier.

Add on to that the psychological fallout that a person is left with when their life completely implodes around them, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that that someone is not, and most likely will never be, worthy of another chance at a relationship.

Ghost made it quite clear to me that as much as I hoped she might feel the same way, that simply wasn't going to happen, and then she moved on without any further explanation as to why she'd let me even think that it might have been possible.

Now I know what you're thinking.

Question #1: If that's the case then why, in the name of common sense, did I not just accept it and do the same?
I did accept it. The process of doing so took much of the next three years, involved me totally isolating myself in the geographic middle of nowhere, and it hurt like an absolute motherfucker...but I finally accepted it.

Question #2: Then why go back and try to reestablish contact?
Crazy as this may sound, and trust me, if there's one thing I know...it's crazy...I did it because part of me wanted to see if it was humanly possible for two people who'd emotionally hurt one another for starkly different reasons to come back to a point of mutual equilibrium and coexist.

I walked away from that meeting cautiously optimistic, because Ghost had given me reason to be, because she thought it might be possible too. It wasn't going to happen right away, nor would it be an easy or painless process, but it was better than the alternative of remaining entrenched in the conflict that had split our relationship apart in the first place.

Unfortunately, the armistice fell apart not long after and she's been a Ghost ever since.

Editorial Note: For the record, I didn't choose that colloquialism for some petty, arbitrary, or passive-aggressive reason. I am no stranger when it comes to the very real practice of ghosting, and that's what happened here. She chose to become a Ghost instead of allowing the dialogue I'd asked for when we last met to continue and I'd be lying if I said that didn't hurt like a motherfucker too.

So where does that leave me regarding today and why it wrecks me so much? Well, let me posit you this:

Take one of the worst moments of your life and on the exact same day, cross it with the coming into the world of someone who's presence in your life would become first a revelation, then a nightmare.

Someone who challenged you to think outside of everything you thought you knew, to take risks again, and most importantly, to give you a reason to let your guard down and take your armor off, only for them to hit you in the one place you've tried the hardest to protect from getting hurt again...

How would you feel if you knew you had that to look forward to year after year, and no amount of distraction, letting go or moving on would let you forget it?

Honestly, the worst part is grappling with myself over which emotion I get to feel more of today - grief or rage.

The rage I can justify a million different ways because that's the lower hanging fruit, as anyone who had their heart broken will tell you. The grief, however, is a totally different animal.

It's not a grief born out of self-pity or seeing myself as a victim by any stretch. Like I said, I brought this on myself and I've got to live with that, just like I've got to live with the reality that if I wasn't me, if my life wasn't what it's been and it didn't affect me like it has, then there's a very real chance I would've never had to write this, because all this might not never have happened.

No...it's the grief that comes with all the amazing little episodes we shared together before all this happened. Those times when we could both be open, vulnerable, fragile and honest with each other without any pretenses, judgments or expectations of anything but that we were two people who could occupy the same space and share things we hid from the rest of the world.

Time doesn't erase them and no one can take them from me, no matter how many years go by. There was this tiny moment where that polarity felt so strong before a million other crazy, stupid things came in and tore it apart. And for all the bullshit about there being 'someone out there for everyone,' or 'there's seven billion other people in the world,' I know damn well that I am never going to recapture that with anyone else.

Not after going through all this.

Yes, relationships are messy and they are never guaranteed to anyone. Yes, when they fail, we have to pick ourselves back up and move on. I understood it then and I still do now, but that doesn't mean I can forget about her...because I can't.

Before she became a Ghost, she was both my friend and she was someone I loved very much. And when this day comes around, I try like hell to remember that feeling more than the void in my life I carry now that she's gone.

Happy Birthday, Katie. You are missed. You are loved. And wherever you are now, I hope you're safe and you are happy.

Grieving

I was sitting at my desk yesterday, as I am wont to do everyday, sifting through social media instead of being productive, as I am also more wont to do, when I came across a post from my foster brother commemorating the first anniversary of his father's passing and dealing with the grief that such an occasion quite justifiably brings...and it got me thinking about that word.


Grief
/ɡrēf/ noun - deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.

It's one of those human conditions for which we are the most culturally hypocritical about. On the one hand, we almost universally acknowledge its existence and one of the primary processes integral in dealing with grief involves communicating what you're feeling to the people who supposedly care about you.

On the other hand, though, we also almost universally acknowledge that the absolute last thing we want to hear is someone trying to articulate said grief, regardless of its cause or effect, especially when it carries on for longer than we care to accept or understand.

There are certain points in our lives where we tend to be more willing to acknowledge that a sustained period of grief is coming and those points completely orbit around death, be it a parent, child, friend, lover, even a pet. We seem capable of recognizing the unpleasant reality that because those people (or animals) held such an important place in our lives, that loss is so profoundly impactful that there's no way we can ignore it when it inevitably happens.

But what about the people who aren't in that place of deep sorrow over the dead...but because of the living, instead?

That, oddly enough, is where I come in.

An old friend of mine passed away just before Thanksgiving. His name was Tim. I'd known him since I was a teenager, even though he was twenty years older, and he was one of the rare examples of an overall decent human being that I managed to come across in my life.

He'd been battling cancer for the better part of two years, and that fight unfortunately took its toll enough that he couldn't fight off the complications. When I got word that Tim had died, I did what I guess I was supposed to do. My heart sank. I had a good cry, and I lamented the sad fact that he's not in the world anymore.

...But I didn't grieve for him. At least, it didn't feel that way compared to the layer of emotional atmosphere I've been existing in for the majority of this decade.

If there's one thing I've learned about the way my particular strain of Chronic Depression works (and I say that because I also recognize that Depression and snowflakes share the similarity of no two are alike), it's that it sustains itself in my brain by feeding on four key emotional food groups:
Anger, Shame, Trauma...and Grief.

Yet, if the primary definition of that word can be reduced down to nothing more than deep sorrow, however, then it's impossible to ignore its everyday presence in my emotional life. And as strange as this is probably going to sound, only one of those cords tying me to that grief has anything to do with someone who's dead.

That someone is my brother Erik, who passed away almost 25 years ago. Aside from the fact that I miss him practically every day, the other aspect of my grief is connected to the shame I've carried since because it wasn't me who died instead of him, because of my intertwined shame over who I am and how I see myself because of the life I've lived.

See, for all his human flaws, failings and peccadilloes, Erik was a good person who was destined for great things. Whereas I...yeah...not so lucky. And try as I have to carry on and move forward and soldier on since he left, the two times each year when my grief for his absence returns always serve as a focal point for my brain to remind me that the world would no doubt be a better place if I wasn't in it.

The rest of my grief, though, is focused squarely on the living and breathing; people who mattered to me, who I cared about, who I loved deeply, passionately...and that didn't stop me from losing them.
Anyone who's ever gone through losing side of a divorce, especially one that involves children, will probably tell you (provided you're willing to listen) that it's one of the most brutal experiences you can have.

Growing up, I'd invested a lot of emotional capital in the idea that when I grew up and became a parent, I was going to do everything I knew how to be a better example to my children than mine were to me.

Editorial Note: It also took me the better part of forty years to come to the educated conclusion that while my parents aren't entirely terrible people in all aspects of their lives, the evidence is more than conclusive that they should've never started a family together. My being a byproduct of this ties more into my shame than grief...so I suppose that's a story for another day.

My son was born on March 9, 2011. The next day, my brain finally broke under the force of a catastrophic emotional breakdown. His mother and I finalized the divorce barely seven months later so she could go off and start her new life with the guy she'd already chosen as my replacement while she was still pregnant.

The sudden reality that what had been a sixteen-year relationship and a ten-year marriage was done and gone with three signatures on a stack of legal documents was one thing. Realizing that I'd also lost the ability to be an involved parent in my son's life was something else.

And even though I get to see and talk to him every week through Skype, there's a lot of other days during that same week where I find myself openly grieving the fact that I failed him as a father before he was even able to crawl, because I wasn't strong enough to keep holding off this chaotic maelstrom sitting inside my head.

Not long after the divorce, I also found myself in a position where I thought I had a chance to start a new relationship with my best friend from college. It's not like I planned it to happen, or wished for it, or even really wanted it. The feelings I found myself grappling with came as a result of being around each other for the better part of two years, about learning about each other, finding out what we had in common and where we differed, about very rare and very special times where we could both be open and vulnerable with each other without any pretense or expectation of romantic affection.

What I remember about that time was going home every night with the thought that I knew someone who was so different than what I'd experienced to that point and being equal parts intellectually enthralled, emotionally intoxicated and utterly terrified.

Then...I fucked it all up...and she walked out of my life. Twice.

You don't need me to tell you that being rejected by someone you genuinely love hurts. Interspersed with all the puppy videos, socio-politicial conspiracy theories and porn, there's no shortage of people willing to tell you what they consider to be the right way to move on from it.

That's not to say I didn't move on from it, though I freely admit that my way of doing so will never gain any seal of social approval, either. I've been retired from new relationships of any and all sorts for the past seven years because I can't go through a week without finding myself thinking about her, or reliving one of the good or bad moments we had, or probably the worst bit of all, finding myself having open, audible conversations with her as if she was sitting right next to me, even though I know that as I write this, she's about 2,000 miles away in Southern California and I'll probably never see her again.

Now, before you lay into me about how unhealthy that is, how much I need to just let it go, let me stop you right there.

I know.

I knew when I was still feeling the immediate aftershocks and I know it even more so now all these years later.

But here's the kicker.

Whenever I try to (and believe me, I have tried), the stark reality is that the sheer amount of raw, unfiltered and white-hot grief that I feel completely and totally destroys me. Conversely, the grief I feel when I let myself skirt along the far edges of it with the help of the coping mechanisms I've developed makes getting through each day just a little easier.

If you're reading this, I don't expect you to understand. Hell, most of the time, even I don't fully understand, because like Depression, there is no standard format for how grief works.

Grief is also a clandestine operator, always sitting in the closed off recesses of your mind waiting for that perfectly opportune moment when the right stimulus comes along to snipe you right through the heart with the emotional impact of a 50-cal. shell.

I can be going through a boring, mundane, utterly predictable day and all it takes is an audio or visual cue, a smell, a word, or even half-a-thought about my son or Katie...and the floodgates just open.
There have been times where I lied in bed at night, trying desperately to get to sleep, wondering if it would be easier for me if they ceased to exist. If, when I woke up the following morning and my brain was still booting up, I came to the realization that they were just suddenly gone.
Not dead, but just...gone!

Part of me would like to think that would be better because if they didn't exist then I wouldn't find myself thinking about them, because I wouldn't have any reason to. There would be no point in my caring about them as much as I do, even after all that's happened.

But that, of course, is not an option. They exist, here and now, and their existence weighs on my heart whether they like it or not, whether they or me wants that existence to or not...because they mattered to me. In vastly different ways, sure, but dammit, they mattered to me.

They mattered for the simple reason that I love them, and being unable to show them, or communicate that to them, or do what I can to make myself worth being someone to love back...?
That's left me with this hole right in the center of my being that every so often gets filled with the deepest sorrow I know of.


It fills with grief...and I honestly don't know if that is ever truly going to go away.

Escape from Anhedonia

I've been sitting here for the better part of two months, trying to convince myself that it's well past time that I get back to working on all the projects that are competing for space on and around my desk.

I've been trying to get myself to pick up one of the many books stacked by my bed, which I got for the purpose of reading, but are instead collecting dust at an exponential rate.

Same goes for the shelves full of all the movies I love, but can't bring myself to watch, and the playlists of all the music I love, but can't bring myself to listen to except when I'm at the gym working out.

If there's one way I can say that Depression has changed me since my breakdown in 2011, and don't think for a second I take any measure of pride by coming clean with this, it's that all seemingly all the things I used to enjoy doing, all the things I used to self-identify with, and gravitate to, and be an unabashed nerd about...

...none of them matter all that much to me anymore.

I didn't realize there was an actual term for this sort of situation, but it turns out it's listed in the dictionary as Anhedonia, which is just a $2.50 word that means, "The inability to feel pleasure."

Editorial Note: In hindsight, it makes sense that there would be such an antonym for Hedonism, but given our proclivity to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle at all costs, I suppose it's easy to let its counterpoint slip by the goalie.

In a lot of ways, it feels totally surreal because for the majority of my life, all those things I enjoyed were avenues I used to try and escape from whatever emotional strife I was dealing with at the time.
I could either bury myself in a book, get lost in a movie or one of the dozens of comp tapes I'd made, or either crack open another spiral notebook or sit at my computer and just let all the things I didn't want to say or know how to deal with spill out through my fingers.

But when you start waking up day after day and finding that those avenues are now seemingly closed off due to the unilateral decision of your own mind that there's no point in going there anymore...?!

Because, honestly, when you feel like you've been told over and over and over again that what you think, what you know, what you like, what you love, and what has come to define you on certain levels as a person doesn't matter to those same people who's perspective, thoughts, feelings and attitudes toward you are of significant emotional value...?!

Well, to paraphrase an old CCR tune...,"Ho lord, stuck in Anhedonia ug-gain."

To be fair, while going through the Year of Hell which I found myself in during 2017, there were times when I felt I was getting those pieces of emotional enjoyment back through a combined regiment of necessity and repetition. Considering most of my days were spent sitting in the local Starbucks or on the T passing the time waiting for work to start, and my nights were spent sprawled out on my severely uncomfortable makeshift bed in the back of my Jeep, having whatever means of escape I could get my hands on was beyond essential to just get from one terrifying day to the next.

When I came out the other side though, the reservoir, as best as I could tell, had finally run dry.


What I've found to be my primary outlets for emotional escape now is either getting lost on YouTube watching other people do the sorts of things I'd wanted to for the past few years, only to have the window of opportunity slam shut, or just turn on my PS4, load up the game No Man's Sky, and escape into galaxies full of 19 quintillion planets that look nothing like Earth...and neither do their inhabitants.

When I was a kid and in the midst of discovering the things I'd grow to be passionate about, I never even considered the notion that they either could or would leave me some day.

Then again, I had no way to foresee that this was how my life was going to go, either. That I would find myself only feeling safe and comfortable in the limited floor space of the house I currently share, and that creating things or doing any artistic or cultural endeavor that calls for me to interact with people for that matter, felt anathema to my existence.

The most basic answer to why this happened, of course, is to point to my Depression and how its come to take over said existence in the last 7-8 years...but that also feels like going after low-hanging fruit.

I can't help but shake the thought that there's more at play here. That it's both a byproduct of the signals I'm getting internally from my own frazzled mind and the external demands, spoken and unspoken, from all sides to just stop trying to get out of this state of creative apathy and non-existence.

The problem is that I can't stay here forever. I know that and have known it for a while. But then there's the rub of trying to figure out what the point of escaping from anhedonia when it feels like no one really wants you to?


Or worse yet...that it won't change anything?

Frayed

I know it's been a while since I've done one of these, and in keeping with my reasons for being silent for so long, I'm going to preface this with something I should've said to someone I used to love very much, when I was given what I didn't realize at the time was my last chance to speak to her.

What do you want me to say, because there's two options here: I can either lie and tell you what I think you want to hear...or I can speak my truth and you're going to have to accept that it's going to be a fairly uncomfortable ride from here.

If you're going with option #1, then it's probably for the best that you pull the ripcord now. No hard feelings, gang, I get it. I've been in this world long enough to understand that real honesty is only valuable if it serves your perspective rather than mine.

Now that I've most likely cleared the room out...I guess I need to get the basics out of the way first.

To say the last few weeks have been difficult in terms of what's been going on in my headspace is a gross understatement. Frankly, they've been nothing short of fucking brutal.

Editorial Note - Now before you find reason to start comparing whatever current calamities you're going through regarding work, family, kids, money, politics, Twitter or whatever else it may be, understand this. It's not that I'm neither unsympathetic or unempathetic to your ongoing conundrums. It's not that I'm not interested in trying to help you figure them out, if you need said assistance.

Mental illness and all that comes with it isn't about engaging in a proverbial pissing contest with the rest of the world about who's got it worse, but whereas your issues go away 99% of the time once the particular problem is resolved, my Depression and PTSD are always there to remind me that not only are they never going away, but I get to operate on their clock, no matter how productive or positive my life is at that moment in time.

Since leaving the job I got here in Cleveland back in September, (on account of it both not being a good fit for me long-term and the tandem of my boss and his boss being passive-aggressive about everything including my attempt to get said mental illness finally under some semblance of control, thanks to having real-honest-to-God-health-care for the first time in my adult life...seriously) I've been trying to make heads or tails of what I'm going to do next.

To that end, I've done the usual applying for jobs that I either never hear back from or get the standard-issue rejection letter which I've grown beyond accustomed to over the last twenty-odd years. I also told myself that because I made a point to save up every nickel and dime I could from my paychecks, it gave me a little flexibility to take this downtime and focus on some things I've been wanting to get back into.

Now that I have all my worldly possessions within reach, that includes going back through the box of notebooks containing all my ideas for the books I wanted to write once upon a time. I also have the file folder on my computer with all the scripts I wrote with the intention of converting them into video essays for the YouTube channel I started back in 2014.

There's also a fresh stack of books next to my bed which have been wanting my attention, which make sense since I bought them for the sole purpose of reading them this year, and my camera, which still takes perfectly good pictures last I checked.

Except there's this rather big problem that's keeping me from doing much else but existing in the small corner of the house I've been camping out in since pulling the ripcord on Life 3.0 back in January...

I don't care about writing...
I don't care about reading...
I don't care about learning or creating...
I don't care about all the things I used to be so immensely passionate about...
I don't care about earning a paycheck, just so I can say I get a paycheck from someone who thinks I'm only marginally worth part of what I'm actually worth...
I don't care about the state of the world as it seems to be hurtling towards political, social and cultural self-immolation...
I don't care about trying to better myself physically, mentally or emotionally because it doesn't seem to change how I'll be seen, perceived, accepted or rejected...

...and I really don't care about people in general anymore because if the majority of the past decade has taught me anything it's that people, even the ones who tell you they love you, or care about you, or want to see you succeed and are willing to help make it happen are just as fake as the facades the rest of humanity have plastered all over social media.

I really just don't seem to fucking care anymore...about anything.

To be clear, I wasn't always like this.

In fact, I've spent most of my life trying like hell to not let this sort of bitter, cynical, angry, jaded, nihilistic malaise get its hooks into me, despite all the times I got emotionally pole-axed into the ground. I kept telling myself that things would get better for two reasons; they couldn't get much worse and because I was willing to do whatever it took to earn the pendulum swinging back in my favor.

Now that it's more than half over, the seemingly inescapable truth of my existence is that's not likely going to happen, no matter how badly I wanted it or how much energy I put into fighting through every obstacle that separated me from who and what I always wanted to be.

That fight has left me utterly spent and beyond exhausted. And yet, I go to bed at night and argue with my brain for hours about convincing myself to get back up and keep going or if it's better that I just finally accept defeat.

At this point, I've truly lost count of the number of people who've tried to convince me that I'm not alone in this world. From my parents on down to people who only know me as another name on a Facebook friend list, they've all said it at one point or another.

But alone is what I feel, more now than I think at any time in my life, because as I've said many times over the years, I'm screaming at the top of my lungs that there is something insanely wrong with the world because it allows a person's life to be this way, and then I realize that everyone in the room who's benefited by it through the dumb, friggin' luck of privilege, either have plugs in their ears or their heads conveniently buried in the sand.

And it's not like I don't understand why they did that either. It's the parable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, playing out in real time. The only difference being that my wolves were there the whole time and they've taken so many bites out of me that I'm amazed I haven't bled out on the carpet yet. What I've taken away from it all is the simple directive that my Depression-addled mind is all too happy to reinforce whenever I get to the point where I want to open my mouth, my mind or my heart.

'Sit down. Shut up. Nobody cares what you have to say because you're no one and nothing. They didn't then and they sure as shit don't now.'

So I find myself sitting here in the near-dark, looking at a box full of stories that I'm wondering why I haven't thrown them away yet, as well as a hard drive full of ideas that I should've deleted by now and a heart full of feelings about a million things that I force myself to keep at bay for the benefit of everyone I'm still connected to. I know I'll get into bed soon and that same argument with the illnesses that have ravaged my brain, identity, confidence and self-worth will carry on for another round.


And the ropes tethering me to this world and this life will continue to fray and unwind just a little bit more. For now, I'm still hanging on, but if I'm honest...if my life has to stay this way, I'm really not sure how much longer I can.

Reinvestment

I start this with an admission: I’m honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to ever come back to this again.

I say that for a number of reasons that could turn this into something akin to a standard-issue fantasy novel. The most predominant reason, however, is the same one I’ve been hearing in one form or another since I was old enough to start transposing the things I see, think and most importantly, feel, onto a page:

No one cares or wants to hear about it anymore and you need to be stop ‘baring your soul’ so much. It’s why you can’t get a job and why people don’t like you.

Over the years, I’ve heard those words in one form or another more times than I can count from my parents, friends, significant others and on down the list and in a lot of ways, I understand why.

It’s one thing to be in a state where you’re having a bad day and things aren’t going well at work, home, school, etc. We all have the need to vent and allow our frustrations, angst and other despondencies bounce off the sounding board of another person who hopefully both empathize and sympathize with us to a degree where it no longer bothers us as much.

But I recently wrapped up a calendar year in which the following took place:

• I’d managed to go back to the one place in the world I’d truly wanted to live in – my hometown of Boston.
• Lost my initial living accommodations because I was quickly reminded of how utterly dysfunctional and broken my family is and became homeless.
• Got a temp job at a place I’d been wanting to work for since I was old enough to know what I wanted my career to be.
• Was making the most money I’ve ever made, yet had to live out of my car at a public truck stop because the job wasn’t stable enough and the cost of living in Boston is beyond insane.
• Lost said temp job because of dollars, cents and idiotic management who told me, “You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just going in another direction.” (That direction was bankruptcy, BTW.)
• Tried to reconcile and rebuild a functioning platonic relationship with the woman who broke my heart and sent me into retirement seven years ago, only to have it end in my being ghosted after one conversation because adulting is hard, even for someone with a Masters Degree.

Now, that is not to suggest that I didn’t have my share of good days among those 365 steps around the sun. Along the way, I got to travel around New England and see a lot of things I didn’t know existed previously. I saw sunsets over Lake Champlain, snow on a Maine beach and my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park on my 40th birthday.

But those genuinely happy moments weren’t always enough to counterbalance all the big, heavy, negative life things that I had to grind through day after day after day, all the while hoping that things which were completely beyond my control actually happened.

Editorial Note: Spoiler Alert – they didn’t. Not a single one.

On this point, I want to make sure you know I understand. To have a bad day is one thing. A bad year is something else…

But a bad life is an entirely different beast to battle with and that’s what I’ve been dealing with since I was old enough to figure out what life is.

I don’t say that with either the want or the expectation of sympathy, so don’t confuse or misinterpret me here. If I wanted that, I’d do what a lot of people do and drop the victim card, saying it’s solely everyone else’s fault, rather than being the least bit introspective and self-aware.

The simple fact and the harsh reality of my life is that the responsibility for what it was and what it’s become balances the scales of responsibility out between everyone who’s impacted me and my simultaneous impact on them. My hands are just as dirty as anyone who ever dirtied theirs at my expense. I know that all too well and I also know I get to live with it, regardless of what comes later.

What I’ve come to discover as I get older is that what seems to separate me from them is my need, often times to my detriment, to both make amends and rebuild bridges with the people who mattered to me, rather than just disposing of them for the sake of moving on or getting over it.

In a perfect world, I would’ve been able to process all the shit I’ve gone through in a more constructive fashion, had I the means to address it in a constructive way. Over the years, my attempts at therapy were far from successful. Not because I didn’t want to do it or I didn’t take it seriously. What I was told from the doctors I went to was that I just had to accept that life isn’t fair, as if that wasn’t something I was overwhelmingly aware of every second of every day.

Ultimately, my interactions with people would come down to that same stupid, condescending question: Don’t you want to be happy?

It’s right around the point where they’re vocally putting the dot on the question mark that I wish I could turn my voice up to the level of a 747’s jet engines on full chuff and scream the following reply in their face before they go flying through the nearest wall or six.

YES!!!

Of course I want to be happy! Do you REALLY think I prefer feeling like this all the time?! 

But living with Severe Chronic Depression is not like deciding to go vegan or taking up painting or frisbee golf. And I don’t care how tough or strong you think you are, if your life calendar consists of one good day for every 50-200 shitty ones, that is going to chew you up and spit you out.

Editorial Note: Before you opt to send me a comment lecturing me on how that’s what life is, I would request you go to your own social media pages and take a good look at how many times you’ve posted something to illustrate and formally declare just how awesome your life apparently is by comparison to the rest of us. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

Which brings me to the here and now:

At the end of the year, I packed up what I could load in my jeep and left New England.

It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, nor is it one I look back on fondly. I went home for a reason and I was hell-bent on making it work there. The circumstances were such, however, that had I been stubborn and stayed, I would also most likely be dead at the present time.

As it stands, I’m not. Instead, I’m in Ohio on the banks of Lake Erie and in the last three months, this is what’s transpired:

• I have a long-term place to live.
• I have a job that doesn’t pay as much as my Boston job, but it’s enough to pay my bills, it’s permanent and the company I work for is much more stable.
• I have medical insurance for the first time since 2014, but they’re the first one I can actually afford to use since about 2002, and I intend to use it. (Seriously, think about how different you’d be if you had to go 15 years without being able to see a doctor and get help.)
• I have both time and space to do things for myself again like go to the gym and get back to creative projects I’ve had to put off for years now, without feeling so anxious about it.

If the last year taught me anything, it’s that I’ve long passed the point where I need to invest my time and energy more into myself than other people. I know that admission will been by some as selfish and ignorant of the fact that they are going through their own struggles and might need someone like me to help along the way.

Maybe it is selfish, but the conclusion I’ve come to is that nobody else is going to make this investment for me and if I truly want to start feeling better, then it has to be done.

If that’s going to be an issue for you, then that is your prerogative, but this had always been the plan for me since I first understood that I had Chronic Depression and realized just how bad it became.

Until now, I didn’t have the means to do something about it. Now, hopefully, I do. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be fun. But if it gets me to where I want to be…which is happy again…then this is what has to happen. I just hope it’s not too late to get started and I find the right people who can help me.

Tally Ho.

That's All, Folks

So it's been a while since I was here last, and it shows.

There was a substantial layer of dust and a fair amount of cobwebs dangling in often hard-to-reach places, and rather than spend the time trying to breathe new life into it, I've decided to pull the plug.

I came to the decision for two reasons.

1.) I find that a lot of the things I've written about are misinterpreted or misconstrued out of the context of what I'm trying to explain or convey. Seeing as I'm the one who's dumping out what is rambling around in my head into each entry, that's on me.

and 2.) I've long held the observation that I'm standing in the middle of a very large and very crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs that things just aren't right and no one is listening. Basically, I guess I've cried "WOLF!" too many times.

I also can't help but feel like I'm stuck in a place that is populated, by and large, with hypocrites.

It's hard to deny that we have a mental health epidemic in this country. Yesterday, in fact, there was the revelation that a woman in Oregon, a stay-at-home mother of two from what appeared to be a stereotypical "normal" family structure, was found dead in the woods near her car about a week after she disappeared.

According to the reports from law enforcement officials, the cause of death is officially suicide, and as the news spread across the social media-verse, a lot of people I know were speculating about why the woman hadn't asked for, sought out, or gotten any help before turning to such a conclusion.

I'd bet good money that either she probably had multiple times and didn't think the response she got was enough to help her deal with what was ailing her, or she felt like couldn't tell anyone because to admit such distress, whether intentional or not, is still perceived as a melodramatic exaggeration.

With that kind of stigma, is there honestly any real surprise that people who are severely depressed or otherwise struggling emotionally try their best to hide it from the world around them?

Like it or not, we're a society that thrives on a status quo of happiness both natural and manufactured. Being frustrated, angry, confused, befuddled, exhausted or in any sort of physical or psychological pain is not something to be discussed even in "polite" conversations, and we're sure as hell not supposed to utilize social media to document that fact. After all, this is the land of Buzzfeed quizzes, pretentious motivational memes and Instagram collages of what makes life great, right?

We marginalize and patronize those who cannot meet that status quo to just "Suck it up and deal," or to camouflage it as to not bring the rest of the party down. They're written off as losers, drama queens and all-around killjoys.

In the last year, I've gotten the distinct impression that the baseline of my daily operating system should be that if I have nothing nice to say like, "OMG!! My life is so totally friggin' awesome that it defies description!!" or "Here's why you need to be envious of my life because it's better than yours!!" then it's best not to say anything at all.

*Editorial Note - Believe me, I really wish I had a life that gave me such reasons to be so braggadocios and superficial. I'm still looking for it, in fact, but it remains a damn elusive lil' critter.

Over the last few years, I've had a lot of people try to tell me that the things I'm dealing with cannot be handled by me alone. They weigh too heavily and I somehow lack the capacity to properly detach myself from them. Maybe, but I've been carrying them on my shoulders since I was all of 75 pounds and still learning my times-tables. I'm not going to stop figuring out how to get rid of them.

I'm just not going to vocalize them anymore as I've also come to learn that such things in "modern" society are dangerous, untactful and are more detrimental to my long-term happiness than actually openly admitting I feel like complete shit on a given day and outlining the reasons why.

Having had experience as an actor, I learned all about wearing masks and using facades to overlap what lies at the heart of a character. So if you see me out and about in the future or if I'm online sometime, don't be afraid to ask me how I'm doing. I promise, I'll tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Life is good. Nothing to worry about. Move along. Anything else, I'll keep to myself.

So with that, I shall bring this whole odyssey to a close. The sets will be struck down later tonight and the new show, whatever it is, will take the stage.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

In Earnest

I've always thought the idea of earning something was a perfectly valid way of achieving a goal. After all, from the time we're children getting our first understanding of how the world theoretically works, we're taught by our parents, teachers and other mentors that the only way to get through life is to know what it is you want, and then work to earn your way to attaining it.

I'd like to think we're taught this as a way to show the difference between being given something you're deemed worthy enough to have, rather than taking it by force. By itself, that dichotomy seems pretty basic, especially when it comes to the people in our lives, for under no circumstances can or should they be viewed as objects.

There's been a lot of discussion in the last week, and rightly so, about the position of earning love and affection and how, in reality, it's not much different a concept than just taking it. I honestly had never considered the ramifications of that before now, but as it's something which has refused to vacate the premises of my mind, I suppose no time like the present.

I doubt I could say when I reached the conclusion that the right way to attain the love of someone else was to earn it. To suggest that any person regardless of gender, can just force another to convey such an emotion for them is ludicrous. I certainly wouldn't want it under those terms and maybe still I'm naive enough to think not a whole lot of other like-minded people would either.

*Editorial Note - In my time, I have come face-to-face with those who don't see it that way and acted based on their conclusions. I sat in rooms for five long years with rapists and predators and listened to their reasons, justifications and excuses for why they did the things they did. To this day, I'm honestly baffled that such people could ever think their actions were in any way sane or rational. I certainly can't, nor would I ever try to.

Like most teenage boys, I imagine I learned the structure of how relationships supposedly work the same way my father, grandfather and all my male ancestors did as well. The man is the one who presents himself to the woman and makes his affections known. The woman then decides if such affection shall be returned. if it is, then the relationship can begin to evolve. If not, then the man must then present themselves to a new potential mate and repeat the process.

I've often wondered, truly wondered, how stressful it has to be for women to constantly deal with the men who are interested in them. I have no context by which to base it on, so all I can do is offer complete conjecture and the willingness to engage that perspective, but I'd imagine it's got to be incredibly taxing. After all, men present themselves across the full spectrum from passive to passive-aggressive, aggressive and hostile.

I never wanted to be aggressive and I certainly didn't want to be hostile. My empathy is far too powerful for me to not think of the damage such an approach would bring to both myself and the person I was feeling the affection for. And I guess that's where the idea of earning it came from along with the mindset of being a nice guy.

Being nice wasn't ever seen as a bad thing for me. In fact, it was reinforced not only by seeing guys who were absolute dicks to everyone around them, but also in no small part by women like my grandmothers, who were both among the most amazing and caring people I've ever known. As a kid, it was the basic understanding of showing kindness to everyone, being respectful, courteous, nice. My Nana used to tell me all the time when I moved to a new town and had to start building my social circle over again, "Just be nice. Kids will like you if you're nice to them."

I took it to heart, in no small part, because I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be accepted.

Only now, some twenty-five years on, I find I've been contributing to a problem which is a whole lot bigger than me, and either through my own base ignorance or the inability to just see it, is it finally starting to sink in.

I've always thought I was going about the process from the right angle. I understood the ground rules regarding how a man is "supposed" to treat a woman and understood them well. They're common damn sense and I'm not the least bit ashamed to say I learned them in no small part by watching male figures in my life being abusive to women and concluding that I had to be the antithesis of those men.

But where I went wrong was masking myself to the notion that earning  was somehow better than taking. On paper it seems that way, except relationships don't happen on paper, despite what the Screenwriters Guild of America might say to the contrary.

It's still an objectification on a more subtle scale, and as someone who's never wanted to treat people as anything other than people, the depth by which I let that shape my perspective and attitudes bothers me. It really, really bothers me. It bothers me because despite my attitude that I was never entitled to anything physical from a woman, the mindset of earning an emotional connection does establish the foundation for entitlement and I blinded myself to the manipulation that came with it.

I'm ashamed of that. I feel terrible about it. I'm angry with myself. I hate the fact that I was capable of being so disrespectful to people I genuinely cared so much about. Had I been able to recognize it sooner and do something about it, I'm willing to bet a lot of my attempts to establish relationships may have gone a lot more different than they have.

I know that the pervasive thing to do right now in the internet metaverse is to really put guys through the wringer for neither understanding or changing their learned misogynistic habits sooner, and some of it is deserved.

The relentless bombardment of media which we all consume permeated into me as well, further reinforcing the idea that feelings can be earned. To prove my point, all I had to do was type "Earn love" into Google, and that was I found the picture that accompanies this blog. It's an established, entrenched part of our cultural lexicon and has been for generations, whether we want to admit that or not.

What I hope women take away from this is that as much as they have to fight off the influences that come with their gender in how they're "supposed" to look, dress, act, think, etc., men are fighting their own gender influences as well. That's not a defense of misogyny or an excuse, but it doesn't change the fact that I've spent the majority of my life believing if I was just a nice guy, someone who practiced and showed the best qualities of who I am, that would be enough. I received positive affirmation of that from the people I looked up to, respected and trusted, both men and women who allowed this point of view to go on.

I both knowingly and willingly swallowed the Kool-Aid and only now am I understanding how poisonous it was, and I'm sorry.

Now that I finally see the full depth of how dangerous being a nice guy can be, it does make me wonder just how I am supposed to evolve from here because honestly, I'm not really sure how. Everything I know has been challenged and shaken through this discourse. It was needed and I welcome it, but now comes the question of what direction I go in, not feeling entirely sure that my instincts know which way is the right one.

I don't want to be a nice guy and I don't want to be an asshole either. I'd just like to be me and hopefully that will be enough for somebody.