Writer's Break

I find myself in a position I haven't been in for a while...wanting to write one of my stories again.
...And now we've reached the point in the plot where the protagonist struggles with the anxiety that comes with attempting such a challenging endeavor.

There was a time in my life where writing didn't scare me this much. To the contrary, the prospect of creating people and places, tapping into themes, ideas, machinations or speculations, used to excite the hell out of me.

Writing was one of the few arenas I ever ventured into where I felt I had some modicum of control over something. I know that observation can imply that I'm a control freak and, depending on your perspective or subjective biases of me, it's not an altogether unfounded one either.

When I was a kid, scratching down stories in old composition notebooks, it wasn't about control but creativity. Why it was that I became interested in storytelling, I couldn't really say. For whatever reason, it was something I just developed a knack for, according to my early grade school teachers.

The older I became and the more I struggled with trying to understand both the people I was in constant contact with, as well as the person I was growing into, the more I needed an outlet, some way to process all of these things pinballing around in my head.

And I won't lie. Some of it was fairly messed up and more than a little scary. That said, I always found it a little reassuring that I was never interested in following in the footsteps of Stephen King or Clive Barker and writing horror stories. My interest was more vested in the psychological, even though there are aspects of it that venture well into the realm of the horrific, trying to understand why we do the things we do to each other, good and bad, always fed my curiosity.

But now, what worries me more is the idea that in order to feel better, whatever the heck that means, it'll involve writing a story that taps into everything I've experienced and how I view the world in all its dark, dirty, unforgiving totality. To funnel it all out into chapters, paragraphs and prose.

It wouldn't be the first time I tried either. The last time I did was six years ago and while it had hints of what I think I'm capable of, part of me knows I can do better...if I can let myself fully go there.

The question is whether or not I can fully commit myself to that sort of a deep dive or not? It's one thing to have an interesting story in your head. It's another thing entirely when it refuses to be extracted.

Nightmares, Teddy Bears and Deja Vu

I woke up the other day from a nightmare so vivid that it's stuck in my mind and pulled on my heartstrings ever since...only it wasn't a nightmare in the classical definition of the term.

We tend to differentiate nightmares from other intense dreams by virtue of the sense of fear or terror they impart on our sleeping selves. This dream I had was on shared that same level of psychological or emotional intensity, but there was nothing frightening or terrifying about it.

When I left New England as a kid, my mother told me that she'd taken some of the things I'd left behind, namely my hand-built collection of model airplanes and all the old stuffed animals I hadn't been willing to part with yet. The one exception to that was a brown 'Gund' teddy bear I'd gotten when I was about ten and decided to bring with me out to the Northwest.

Editorial Note: I still hung on to him even into my mid-30's as something I could pass along to my child when they were born. I ended up giving him to my son when he was about two because his mother tried giving him back to me after our divorce. As far as I know, he still has it.

Anyway, the nightmare I had involved me going to my mother's house in Maine and reclaiming the rest of the gang. My mother was nowhere to be found, but I made my way inside and up to the attic. There, wrapped in a couple of old garbage bags, were friends I hadn't seen in more than a lifetime.

The most familiar one was also the biggest, a tan and brown dinosaur I'd named 'Stanley the Stegosaurus,' because that's what kind of dinosaur he was and I knew my dinosaurs well back then, and because by my childhood logic, Stanley seemed like as good a name as any for a Stegosaurus.

And sitting in that cramped, dusty, chilly space, getting reacquainted with Stanley and the rest, I found myself getting blasted by a rogue wave of emotion I could never have anticipated and absolutely could not escape. So much so that even thinking about it now, I'm not ashamed to say, is making me feel it all over again.

Why did it totally wreck me like that? Because they took me back to the point in my life where I was just a little ragamuffin kid who had no idea or even a comprehension that this is what my life was going to be like when I got to my parents' age. At that point, I was still happy and optimistic about life and the world and utterly blissful in my naive dissonance about just how incredibly screwed up it was going to start becoming before I could even blink.

I was still at a stage where my imagination could run rampant and not be shackled in a cage of mental illness and anxiety. Where I could have friends and not constantly worry about what I was going to do or not do that would cause me to lose them.

Where I could be boyishly smitten with a girl instead of having to be completely terrified as a man every time I let myself get anywhere near that with a woman.

At that point in my life, I still had my whole life to look forward to and if you'd told me then that this is where I'd be...that this is who I'd be...I know my younger self would've probably responded with something along the lines of this.

Then I don't want to grow up. Ever.

But grow up I did. Lessons did I learn. Regrets I have struggled with. People I have lost and pain I have felt.

And I know that's why the longer I sat there in the attic, cradling this old thing of fabric and stuffing and memory, I felt it all just start pouring out of me like a waterfall. I don't know how long I cried. I don't know if anyone heard me and if they did, I didn't care.

That little ragamuffin kid who'd been through so much hell just needed to let it out to someone who wouldn't judge him for doing so. The last thing I remember was wrapping my arms around Stanley and just bawling like I haven't in a long time...

...Then I woke up, and I did it all over again.

Just like I'm doing now as I try to get this all down on virtual paper.

I'm not a believer in gods or religions anymore. I used to believe karma was a thing until I realized the people I knew who did things to warrant getting a heaping helping of bad karma never got it, so they never had to live with what they'd done like I have.

But something I have believed in is deja vu, because I've experienced it more times than I can seriously count, and it's always based on something I've dreamed about at some point. I don't mean in ways like I can guess lottery numbers or presidential elections, but seemingly random moments or encounters that trigger a part of my brain that says with a high degree of certainty, we've done this before.

As sure as I am of anything, I know there's a point soon where I will be in that attic. Where I'll find that bag, open it up, see my old friends again and remember, for maybe the briefest of moments, how it felt to be free of all the things that were waiting for me when I had to leave them behind and had to grow up.

And I know that I will sit there and cry like I maybe have never cried before because there's nothing I can do to go back to that time, start all over, and hopefully get it right the second time around.

Detachment

As much as we despise cliches', there is legitimacy in the one that suggests two of the hardest teachers we learn from are age and experience.

If the last decade has taught me anything, it's that there truly is a sense of liberation in becoming as emotionally detached from the people in my life as much as possible.

When I was younger and more naive, the argument could be made that one of my most obvious flaws was I cared about people too much. I cared about both what they thought of me and I cared far more for them than I should.

Despite my ever-present, stubborn refusal to accept it, it would be unfair to put all this on my shoulders. As cliche' also dictates, we don't get to choose the family we're born into, nor do we always choose the people we end up falling for the hardest. And as much as I am deserving of blame for my part in making a mess of those relationships or potential relationships, it's been pointed out on many an occasion that the totality of said blame cannot solely be mine either.

When I set off on my own, following my divorce in 2011, whatever minuscule bits of romantic I'd managed to retain tried to reassure me it was a chance to meet new people, build new relationships and maybe find an avenue to what we're all hoping for when those opportunities present themselves...Happiness.

But, of course, that didn't happen. Instead, I ended up losing just as many friends as I'd made to that time, for various reasons. So I did the only thing that made sense. What people like my mother and some of the therapists I'd gone to to that point had strongly urged me to do.

I stopped caring about people any more, because as best I could tell, people had stopped caring about me.

In hindsight, I don't entirely blame them, either. When you see someone struggling like I was at the time and they're not able to either articulate that in a way you understand, or it affects their behavior in ways that make their presence in your life potentially toxic, the easiest thing to do is just write them off as another lost cause and focus on the people who seemingly have their shit together.

That was a problem for me, though, because those people weren't lost causes to me. They were friends and family that I cared about. People I'd spent years cultivating positive relationships with and not having that as a possibility anymore wasn't something I was willing to concede.

So I didn't. I tried to put out each fraying thread that connected me to them in the hope that I could salvage at least some part of my particular social tapestry. In retrospect, though, I'm realizing more and more that I should've done the smarter thing.

I should've just let the whole thing burn to the ground.

That is, after all, what we're all told to do. In this age of wholly expendable relationships, even with the people who we matter most to, it takes next to nothing to completely shut them out of our lives anymore. It's what the block function was designed for on every social media outlet we're reliant on for relationships and communication nowadays.

Maybe it's because I'm older and was conditioned in a much different time, but I never saw the benefit of being someone who just arbitrarily tossed friendships and relationships away when times got tough. Then again, I'm just as obstinate about the idea of actually talking to whoever it is you're trying to salvage said relationship with, rather than going through text messages or other passive-aggressive means.

By the time I reached thirty-five, I think it finally sank in that what the future held for me involved having next to no connections with people I know or used to know. I won't lie, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but it also came about in no small part because of what happened with Ghost, as well as my inability to get moving in the sort of upward trajectory that affords chances to have a bigger social life.

Being trapped in the stasis of forced mediocrity makes your attractiveness for both platonic and non-platonic relationships incredibly low. As a result, I struggle to keep in touch with even my closest friends from when I was a kid. 

Dating is another matter altogether. More than once, I had female friends whom I found myself becoming attracted to, only to have them do the same thing that Ghost did, albeit to lesser degrees. Thanks, but no thanks. I then got to watch them go into different relationships with guys who treated them just as badly as the guys who'd came before, and inevitably, I was called upon to be a voice of reason and a shoulder to cry on. 

And I did it. I played my part. But I was again reminded of just why it is that I'm not apparently cut out to be anything other than a disposable friend.

So now, as I approach another birthday in a few weeks, I think I've finally turned the corner on being able to keep people at arm's length once and for all, and my days of being as fully immersed in trying to stay connected to people are over.

It's not that I don't care about them anymore. Instead, I think my compassion has been tempered by all the times where I was slapped down and put in my place for caring as much as I did. There are days when the realization of where I'm at now emotionally does bother me. I know it shouldn't have to be this way, except I don't get a say in it anymore either.

It's an crazy new world. I just happen to be trapped in it.

Masochism Tango

"Why can't you just be happy?!"

This may be the second-most asked question I used to get along with why was I so angry all the time.

Logically, it seems purely rhetorical because if a person is always seeming to be one thing, then they can't very well be another simultaneously now, can they?

I started a new job last week and with that came the implied expectation that being able to make money and pay bills again would provide a measure of happiness. And while this may be true on a certain level, I think we often confuse safety and survivability with happiness.

Yes, being able to take care of myself is a nice thing, but that's a given. What isn't is that even though I like my job, it hasn't made me happier by any real measure, either.

In fact, I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt truly happy about my life from top to bottom.

On the one hand, I suppose it's natural for human beings to never want to reach that apex of complete satisfaction with their existence. After all, there are entire threads of both philosophical and psychological theory that state we never can and never should reach that level, because we should always keep driving towards various goals and never rest on our laurels.

And yet, if you're in the rarefied air of the financial and/or social elite, the rest of us poor paeans assume that's the absolute pinnacle of our modern existence, so it must be impossible to not be anything but happy.

I suppose if that were true, we wouldn't have a need for tabloid journalism, because there's few pastimes we love more as a culture than knocking an elite off the pedestal we sycophantically built for them to stand upon in the first place.

Then, on the flip side, are those of us for who being unhappy has become so ingrained in our DNA that we don't really know any other way to exist. It's not that we don't want to be happy. To the contrary, we spend a great deal of time and energy thinking, hoping, praying, pining for the means by which we can escape the maze of misery that we've locked ourselves into, only to realize that we sealed off the way out a long time ago.

For myself, I'm pretty sure that's been the background of my existence since before I was still in elementary school, and there's a name for this sort of psychological mindset:

Emotional Masochism.

Now, the implied connotation of that word aside, I'd like to think I'm not much different than anyone else in that I am not a big fan of being inflicted with pain. But the difference between physical and emotional masochism is that the former is obviously affiliated with sex, while the latter is both more subtle and also more destructive.

Emotional masochism isn't even so much a byproduct of Depression. For a lot of us, it can become the hinge point on which our attempts to break out of a Depressive cycle or resort to self-sabotage often hinges on.

In hindsight, this shouldn't be anything new to me. Like I said, I've lived like this for longer than I really recognize. Part of what I've been willfully ignorant of, though, is just how pervasive and deeply rooted my emotional masochism has become in the last ten years.

I was talking with my brother a few weeks ago and mentioned that I've been trying to convince myself it's beyond time to get off social media and go back to a non-connected lifestyle. After all, I don't get anything out of it and really haven't for a long time. To the contrary, whenever I do go on it, all it does is make me feel empty, unwanted and depressed because 1.) no one really reaches out to me anymore and 2.) I get a deep emotional longing to talk to people that I can't talk to anymore, because they've permanently disconnected from me.

This is a key tenant of Emotional Masochism. You know that something is only going to make you feel emotionally wounded, and yet you do it because on some level, you can only function by being in that position of emotional pain.

The same goes for:

• Trying to hang on to toxic relationships.
• Seeking approval from people who will never give it.
• Having difficulty existing in a conflict-free environment.
• Disregarding compliments or positive affirmations.
• Chronically pushing people away.
• Being unable to let go of past trauma.
• Needing to fix things with other toxic people.
• Taking responsibility for everything, even if you're not at fault.
• Beating yourself up through external stimuli that invokes sadness or pain.
• Feeling bad and apologizing for trying to be your genuine self.

Now, I may be crazy...but does that sound like anyone you know...?

I'm the first to admit that I truly despise either generating or being in orbit of drama. I've had more than my share for one lifetime and in coming to the realization of my propensity for passive-aggressive behavior a few years ago, I've tried making a concerted effort to both recognize and limit my output of both as much as possible.

But this is different.

It's not because I somehow like being miserable. Hell, nobody likes being miserable.

The problem is this is how I've learned to function for so long that if I find myself potentially deviating away from it and in a direction of possible, genuine happiness, my mind sees that and overcompensates by reminding me of all the reasons why I can never be happy.

And believe me...that list is incredibly long and makes a rather valid case when it wants to.

So when I find myself in those brief moments where I start thinking I've found the way out of my particular labyrinth of self-imposed misery, where I think to myself if I can just summon the means to get one of my books done, or focused on my video essays, or opening myself up to someone I might have an emotional connection with, I'm flooded with all the times I tried to do something similar and it blew up in my face.

Then there inevitably comes the sense that...oh yeah...this is how I'm supposed to exist. I'm the one who's not supposed to be happy because like all things, there's a finite amount of happiness to go around in the universe and if I manage to get my hands on some, then it means someone else has to be miserable instead.

Either that or the few people I have left in my life won't have reason to stay connected to me, because I somehow serve as an emotional counterweight for their own happiness and/or successes.

"Remember, if you're not careful, you'll end up like Devin and we ALL know what he's like. Whatever you do, DON'T end up like him!"

The weirdest thing, though, is as much as I feel the hurt I subconsciously inflict upon myself sometimes, other times I just end up feeling...numb. Like I've gotten so used to the emotional self-flagellation at this point that the sting isn't as sharp as it used to be. The result is I don't downshift into feeling miserable or anything, but more that it establishes a baseline for how I'm going to feel for most of the day.

By now, I'm pretty sure I know every nook and cranny of the labyrinth I've constructed for myself, because I've been round it more times than I can count. If anything, I'm at my most stable when I'm sitting dead in the center of it because, as physical/sexual masochists will likely agree with, you feel the most alive when you're in the most pain.

After this long, I don't know if I'll ever truly stop being emotionally masochistic. I'm so comfortable in beating myself down and self-sabotaging every possible avenue that could lead to some form of contentment or happiness that to suddenly stop doing so feels incredibly alien and scary to me.

I've always told people that I'm my own harshest judge and my own worst critic and for good reason. There's things I've done which warrant such scrutiny and some form of punishment. And I've had people try so many times to convince me over the years that I need to forgive myself for both those things and what other people did to me that I still shoulder the blame and responsibility for.

I know they're right. I know that I should. I know there's nothing I can do about all those things and continuing to hurt myself over them on an emotional level is just as damaging as if I were doing it on a physical one.

But honestly...the reason why I don't, as bizarre as this is going to sound...is because I've been hurting myself for so long that I feel the closest thing to happiness I can reach only when I'm feeling miserable.

Rage Phase

"Why are you so angry all the time...?!"

It's arguably the most common question I was asked by my mother in the last few years we still talked to each other.

It's also the question I could answer eight ways until Sunday, and it didn't matter. She just never seemed to get it.

Neither, unfortunately, did anyone else really.

In their defense, it's not their fault, nor am I blaming them. Anger is a hard thing to rationalize or make sense of, and we're seeing more and more evidence of that as we become increasingly split between political, social, cultural, religious, economic and gender divides with both ever-increasing frequency and ever-escalating hostility.

If I'm honest, the anger I've carried for much of the last four decades pales in comparison to what I see wielded by other people, either on social media or in the real world, every day. Most of it for nothing else than to be pissed off about both something and/or everything they find objectionable about the world at present.

And thanks to the power of the internet, social media and the ability to foster a true outrage culture, I watch tens of millions of people launch their intercontinental ballistic rage missiles at each other day after day without even a nanosecond's thought as to who they're directing all that angst toward in the first place.

If there's one thing I can say makes me an exception to that, it's I can both identify the reasons why I've developed my rage arsenal into what it's become and why I'm not so quick to hit the button to obliterate the targets they're currently fixed on.

I once heard an axiom which states, Having strength is one thing. Knowing how to use it is another. The same, as I've experienced, also applies to anger.

To truly understand the foundation of where mine emanates from requires the ability to comprehend a person's life in both totality and context of the various episodes that make up said totality. You have to be willing to examine a childhood interspersed with abuse and neglect. Where I was made to feel both powerless and stupid, no matter what I did to show I was actually neither.

You have to recognize that many of the labels that are thrown about indiscriminately nowadays to define pretty much everyone, don't necessarily apply to me.

Yes, I am a white, cisgendered male. Contrary to popular belief, I had no say in that whatsoever. That's how I was built at the factory and how I rolled off the genetic assembly line.

The dominating rhetoric at present would have it believed that that construct automatically guarantees I also came with inherited traits like privilege, bigotry, misogyny, entitlement. And while I am the first to recognize and admit that I am far from a flawless human being and that I carry my share of prejudices and biases, the assumption that I subscribe to any of those things is antithetical to who I am or have always been.

How do I know? I've either been subjected to them or I've seen people I cared about subjected to them. I've had to watch as every door that potentially led to a better life get slammed in my face by people with those exact same traits, without a damn thing I could do to pry them back open, and all it did was add even more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when you see lives you'd give anything to have squandered by those who never deserved them anymore than they thought you deserved yours?

Not that matters to most people nowadays, of course. We live in a world so cynical and untrusting that I could say the sky is blue or water's wet and someone would have to take to Twitter or Facebook and call for the social media lynch mobs to gather their pitchforks and torches before marching off to bring me to heel.

Editorial Note: For me to recognize just how cynical we've become is saying a lot considering I was a journalist for ten years. If there's a more cynical lot in the history of humankind, you'd be hard-pressed to find them.

You'd also have to venture into the whacking great hole in the center of my being where my heart used to be, and you'd have to be willing to understand why it's not there anymore.

If you did, then you'd see that every person I've ever loved in this life, from my mother on down, took their shots at it, smashing it to pieces over and over again because I wasn't good enough for them to love back. It didn't matter how much I cared about them, how much I wanted it or what I tried to convince them otherwise. The answer was and has always been the same.

No.

And all that's done is add more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when the one thing we're all told we need to survive and be happy is the one thing you have to live without?

I know I'm not the only man to find myself in that situation, nor will I be the last to either. Right now, there's an entire legion of them so pissed off that they believe it's somehow their right to subjugate every woman for their own sick and twisted purposes.

We call these people InCels, and more than once, I've been lumped into their ranks by someone who usually operates solely by indiscriminately slapping discriminatory labels on those they think fit their own prejudicial profiles.

For the record, the ideology these people operate under abhors and disgusts me, and were I to ever come across an InCel in person, I'd be more inclined to knock his twisted head off than shake his hand and say I agree with him in any way, shape or form.

But good luck trying to convince a supposedly rational and open-minded person of that these days. You're just as likely to get a response of socio-political doublespeak cultivated from their own personal echo chambers of media and like-minded sorts who would never dare to think their twisted view of the world could ever be wrong.

And all that's done is add even more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when someone is so quick to define you without realizing the definition it places squarely on them as well?

Now the obvious question at this stage is, Well, if you're so angry all the time, why don't you take it out on everyone who makes you feel that way?

Believe me, there's days where I find the idea more than enticing. Some days, the rage is so intense that I'd like nothing more than to channel in the direction of everyone who, for whatever reason, caused it to build up in me in the first place.

It's one of the most Newtonian things we can do as human beings. Action met with an equally-opposing reaction.

Except here's the thing. I'm old enough to have been introduced to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction when it was still a relatively new term in human existence. The idea being that in nuclear war, if both sides launched their arsenals either simultaneously or in succession, the outcome would be the same.

Neither side would live through the aftermath.

If I wanted to, I could destroy the people who destroyed me and I know there would be at least some modicum of even momentary satisfaction in that. That I would feel just as justified as they did.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I would survive it either. And there's a second axiom that I've tried to adhere to with each passing year: The best revenge is to live well.

And part of living for me, whether I like it or not, is with my anger and not using it against those who gave me all the reason in the world to have it in the first place.

It may be the harder option. It may not always be the better option. But I choose that over salting the Earth with the emotional firepower I carry any day.

Stupid Depressed

I got an email last week from my son's mother, letting me know the elementary school he goes to has been testing him to see if he qualified for their Talented and Gifted program.

The results turned out to be quite promising.

Having just turned eight years-old earlier this month, my son scored high enough that he met the criteria to be considered intellectually gifted with a strong proclivity for both mathematics and reading comprehension.

As a parent, this is one of those things I'm supposed to take a measure of pride in, and don't get me wrong, I absolutely do. My son is an amazing human being and I've had friends who've told me that, "He gets a lot of that from you."

But does he?

On some level, being theoretically half of his genetic blueprint, I guess that's possible. When I was his age, I too was considered intellectually gifted to the point where I was put in a similar program that my elementary school called Enrichment. Unfortunately, I didn't last long in it because that was about the same time that outside influences, namely a rapidly-deteriorating home situation thanks to my step-father's abuse and my mother's denial of reality, impacted how I functioned in school.

Now I, like virtually everyone else on this rock, never likes to think they're not intelligent. In fact, there's a great social and cultural stigma surrounding intellect and our ability to both learn and function as human beings, considering we pride ourselves as the top of the evolutionary food chain.

We look at those who suffer from ailments which affect the brain, many from the time we're born and despite our sympathetic tendencies, there is almost a universal acknowledgment that they are somehow defective people and are therefore, by albeit biased and prejudicial metrics...not really people at all.

If there's one thing I've noticed a definitive shift in since my Depression evolved in 2011, it's that from an intellectual standpoint, and this is going to sound a bit harsh but it's the only way I can accurately describe it, I can't help but feel like I've somehow become...dumber.

Someone I knew mentioned a New York Times article yesterday about an urban dispute between a resident and one of her neighbors...who happened to run a Dominatrix school out on the same block. Their opinion of the article was that it represented "surface-level repetitive hearsay," which is a pretty damning conclusion, to be sure.

Reading the article myself, however, I wasn't seeing much of the same context. Granted, I realize that no two people ever share the exact same opinions on anything. But what concerned me was that my critical eye seems to have developed a cataract or glaucoma, and I couldn't process the information the same way that I used to a decade ago when my vision felt clearer.

The same goes for even simple or repetitive tasks. Where I used to be able to go through them without having to expend much mental energy, nowadays almost everything feels like a constant uphill slog just to get them done.

While I was still living in New England and participating in clinical trials for Depression treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the things I was both screened and tested for was how my cognitive functions might have been impacted since my mental illness escalated. Along the way, I also discovered an article published in 2016 by the Harvard Medical School, that talked about how Clinical Depression can negatively impact how we think.

"...depression can actually change your ability to think. It can impair your attention and memory, as well as your information processing and decision-making skills. It can also lower your cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt your goals and strategies to changing situations) and executive functioning (the ability to take all the steps to get something done)."

To be fair, one article does not a formal diagnosis make. But what alarms me is that the older I get and the longer I live with my Depression as it's currently constituted, the more I'm seeing little markers here and there of my brain's inability to process and function like it did before I had my breakdown eight years ago.

It definitely feels like part of why reading has become more difficult than it used to be, even though my eyesight hasn't changed at all. Same goes for both short and long-term memory recall and being able to follow orders of operations. Even the creative side has become more of a consistent uphill climb. Whereas I could sit down and churn out a couple of thousand words a day with little effort or difficulty, nowadays, it's a good day if I can find even two hundred or so.

When it comes to Depression, we tend to look only at the emotional impact it can have on the human mind. It makes sense, considering part of how we diagnose it in the first place is determining a lack of serotonin and/or dopamine in the brain. Both of which are key neurotransmitters that allow us to feel happy. 

But to think that it can also attack and debilitate your mind to the point where you're potentially not as smart as you used to be...?

I'd like to think that I'm not an unintelligent human being and I've proven that many times in my life. Most recently when I completed my education about a year before my breakdown. I know I have the capacity to be able to do all the things I used to, but now they feel harder to execute than they did.

Some of that could be part of getting older, yes, but it's hard not to think that the toll this whole process has taken on me isn't also affecting my intellect, as well as my emotions.

And that is a damn scary thought.

Hated

How do you know when someone truly despises you?

Given the inherent volatility that all destructive and negative emotions can carry in the moments we find ourselves tapping into them, it's one thing to say you're angry enough with someone to quantify it with the word hate...

It's an entirely different level altogether to find yourself feeling that hate in its sweet, comforting, rage-filling forms even at the mere acknowledgment of a certain person's existence.

How do I know? Because for a large portion of my life, that is how I felt about both a person, my first stepfather...and also myself.

That might not make much sense, but if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'll explain.

My first stepfather (a distinction I have to make on account of I've had two stepfathers, to date) was a truly despicable man. He was both physically and emotionally abusive, incredibly misogynistic and seemed to revel in being the sort of toxic, power-tripping patriarch that was consistent with growing up in the early-mid 80's.

By the time my mother finally got the hint that being married to him was never going to lead to anything close to a happy ending, the damage was already done when it came to me. In the five years I had to live with him, the experience transformed me from a happy, pugnacious, outgoing five-year-old, to a combative, rebellious, depressed and extremely angry ten-year-old.

And I would spend the next quarter-century hating him with every fiber of my being.

At its worst, anytime he was brought up in the conversations I had with my mother, my entire demeanor shifted on a dime and all that hate shot straight to the surface of my being. She never understood why that happened, in no small part because she's both incapable of empathy and could not grasp what living in that environment could do to a hyper-emotionally sensitive kid like I was.

The fuel for that hatred wasn't just what he did and what he put my family through, however. It was also because I underwent that transformation because of the time he spent in my life...and the natural byproduct of that is said hatred bled into how I view myself too.

Now, to be fair, there is no way of creating metrics that can determine a person's ultimate impact on your life. If you'd told me when I was younger that that period would be so pivotal in my becoming who I am now, I'd like to think I'd know what my response would be:

God, I hope not!

But here I am, a long way from back then, and even though I managed to finally let go of that hatred I felt for him a few years ago, it's not lost on me just how much energy I devoted to keeping that feeling going for that long. The big lesson I took away from it is that it was too much energy that I could've used for other things, better things.

What I took away from all that was I couldn't and shouldn't let myself fall victim to that level of hatred again, no matter who it is that hurts me. It's just not worth it, and while it bothers me that it took me so long to figure that out, I also realize that the only reason I did was because I went through it in the first place.

Which brings me to this.

I don't remember the last time someone hated me as much as Ghost appears to now.

The last person who could make that claim is likely my ex-wife, who told me as much in the last days of our marriage, when I was trying everything I could to keep it from completely disintegrating. When you're going through a divorce, it's easy to be angry enough with the other person to feel like you hate them.

Having been through three of them, two of my mother's and one of my own, I think I'm as qualified as anyone to make that observation.

But once the paperwork was all signed, we went our separate ways and our son continued to grow up, it feels like both of us realized that we had to find some way to co-exist for his benefit. It wouldn't be fair to him to have two parents continuing to war over things that really don't matter anymore.

Do we still have our disagreements on things? Sure, but the way we deal with them could be much more toxic than what we've managed to do so far. I'd like to think if you asked her, she'd tell you that while she doesn't love me anymore and is happy with her new husband, she's not angry enough to say she truly hates me, either.

Ghost is another story entirely.

When we last saw each other two years ago, I had reason to believe that we'd be able to salvage the uneasy friendship we'd rebuilt over the preceding three years. During that discussion we'd had, I made my position in the clearest and simplest terms I could.

I wasn't interested in trying to establish a romantic relationship anymore, despite the lingering feelings I still held at the time. That was not even part of the equation.

What I wanted was simply a dialogue, starting with that first conversation. At some point, we'd meet again and have a second conversation. If that went all right, maybe we'd have another after that...and another...and another...until hopefully we'd finally worked through all the crap separating us from that possibility.

Well...so much for that.

I was talking with my female housemate about it the other day and she brought up two key points that apply to every relationship we ever have with anyone, platonic or otherwise.

1.) The point where a relationship becomes truly irreconcilable is when one side develops any degree of resentment for the other.
and 2.) As much as we like to think otherwise, there really is nothing we can do to control how someone feels about us, whether it be love or hate. All we can do is evaluate ourselves, learn from it and still try to be the best version of ourselves we can be.

Look, here's the thing.

I fully admit and accept that in the course of my relationship with Ghost, I both did and said some incredibly stupid things.

If I hadn't put myself in the position of allowing her to manipulate and use me like she did, had I not been honest about my feelings and how'd they'd evolved and if I wasn't so emotionally unstable at crucial times, thanks to my highly elevated Depression and anxiety...odds are I wouldn't be writing this now.

I've never shied away from that and if anything, I've done everything I can think of to make amends for them. And if you were to ask her, my suspicion is that's what she'd say is the problem.

I already know her favorite adjective to describe me is obsessive, and I can't objectively says she's wrong either. As I've discovered in the last few years, what drives that obsessive nature is the frequency of intrusive thoughts that I deal with every day, whether I want to listen to them or not.

Contrary to popular belief, my motives have never been to make an already bad situation worse. Be that as it may, however, that's exactly what happened and now there is a version of me that exists in her mind that can only represent every negative thing she believes I'm potentially capable of, regardless of how insane they might be.

But that's what happens when you find yourself hating someone. You either forget or flat-out ignore that that someone has any degree of humanity left, because to do so could mean that your hatred is either misplaced or ill-conceived.

Unfortunately, the only way to truly find out is to do what people who are on opposing ends of the hate equation are unable to do. Talk.

At this point, I don't think I'd be out of place if I was to just do the same thing and start hating Ghost back. After all, as much as I hurt her, she hurt me just as badly in return. There's plenty of reasons I could use to justify giving into my baser feelings and let myself just spend the rest of my life returning the favor.

The difference between us though is that I've already been there once. As much as this situation continues to pain me, I have no interest in dropping back into that emotional strata again.

As it is, all possible avenues that once connected us are closed. Going on LinkedIn, of all places, to do some job networking and applying on Friday, even there all traces have been scrubbed. Having already been scrubbed from the rest of social media, even though I'm using it less and less and am seriously considering getting out of it altogether, I can't help but look at that and think the whole situation has gone to a completely different level.

You don't get to that point unless you feel nothing but absolute hatred for another human being and that reality makes me even sadder about how this has all gone.

Six years ago, Ghost wrote the following at a point of self-evaluation, where she was telling herself she was "emotionally detoxing, overhauling and trying to become a better person."

"I've driven one of my best friends away.  I've broken four hearts, three to the point I also destroyed the friendship that went with them. I've drifted away from the groups I'd supported and contributed to.  I've given up asking permission in favor of asking forgiveness. I've adopted a habit of bending the truth and lying to get out of or lessen punishment and damages when I'm caught doing something wrong or that will be interpreted as bad.  I've stopped thinking about the things I do and their consequences."

From where I sit, that evolution never happened. Instead, she did what a lot of us do. What I did for more than half my life.

She chose to hate someone and no matter how much I hate the fact that I put her in that position, there's nothing I can do about it any more.

The way is shut.