I Chose To Be Someone

It’s been a while, I know; nearly a whole month. Fortunately, I’ve had a revelation in that time. Ironically, revelation came from my darkest personal demons. In learning how to live with myself, I forgot who I chose to live as.

 

As I’ve written, I once made an attempt against my own life. There was a time earlier than that, somewhere around 6th grade, – I think I was 14 – when I wanted to die. You could call it a single prolonged year of suicidal contemplation. The urge persisted on and off for much longer, but during this one year, suicide was a haunting.

I was naive enough at the time to believe, if I stopped willing my heart to beat, it would stop. In retrospect, I doubt I would have killed myself if I decided to die. So, 14 year old me was faced with an unnecessarily dramatic choice of life or death, and I chose to not die. But I didn’t choose to live.

14 year old me hated himself. He was an abomination. He believed in honesty, but he lied all the time. He was taught to be gentle, but he aimed to break bones when he fought. I could go on. He hated himself. So if he lived, he had to change.

He looked to role models: Gandhi and Buddha, mainly, though his views on them were probably inaccurate. His real role models were compassion and giving. Despite what was probably clinical depression, in an alienating environment, he sought to be better. Do more to help people.

And it kind of worked. Every day, he said something nice. He made someone laugh and/or smile. When he had something to share, he did. When he could say thank you, he did. If he had nothing good to say, he said nothing. So when he was punched on the bus, he stopped punching back, and never told on them. And so on. Cookies, notes with smiling faces. Going to summer camp later on only helped this; so many more people to share chewing gum with, tell stories to, listen to all their problems.

I didn’t learn to make friends, unfortunately, and happiness was fleeting. I was a serious person. Depression never went away. I hardly felt gratification for what I did; I only knew I had to do it; another me, who did not do those things, did not deserve life. This reason to live was not a reason at all; it was a law. Without anything to truly sustain me, I wore down with each passing year, to the point where I’d cry to my best friend, apologizing, “if only you met me a year earlier. I could have given you more a year ago.”

I meant it. At first, writing notes with smiling faces and cheerful remarks like “You’re like the sun; you brighten my day. Just remember that,” was easy. I felt invested. It became harder to think of those things. Listening to people with a face that said “I see you” became harder. Everything grayed away, and it strained me to put color back in. By the time I hit 10th grade, I’d almost lost it entirely. I gave up living. But I was lucky; I ended up in a place that gave me compassion and taught me, if I wanted to help people, I had to learn how to live. I dedicated the next two years to that. Started taking my own advice, like “Pause for a moment. Breathe. Feel. Move.”

But the effort to cheer myself up was entirely consuming, and it was a battle I was bound to lose. A couple years of college proved that to me: the suicide attempt following freshman year. Close friends told me to take care of myself. And I tried.

 

Fast forwarding to now, I’ve learned to do better, albeit with medication and therapy. But something is still missing.

 

One night, in a particularly terrible bout of self hatred and wallowing, a voice was berating me. Scolding who I was. A little bit of survivor’s guilt, a little bit of shaming myself in comparison to much greater people. I’ve seen death, I’ve nearly drowned, I’ve seen pain and live with forms of chronic pain myself. I’m a little insane, and I’ve seen people more insane than myself. I’ve loved and been loved, I’ve hated and been hated… Somewhere, in this confusing jumble of everything-I-think-of-makes-me-feel-anger-and-pain-at-myself, a voice in my head screamed, “we didn’t let you live to become this.” 

It clicked. I’m not the person I chose to be. I’ve been struggling to survive. I used to try and be someone who always shared, went out of his way to give, crossed the barrier of awkward and insecure to chance at brightening someone’s day. Now I’m just passively nice, who shares when convenient and listens when asked. I think this is why I feel shallow and why I’m still haunted.

When I chose life, and later failed to die, I think someone inside me walked through the door I saw. I think that someone could have lived a normal life, caring for himself and finding happiness in a hobby like cooking while taking care of just the people close to him. That’s not who I chose to be; that’s not who I’m happy to be; and that’s not who stands on the living side of the threshold.

This feeling isn’t entirely thought out yet; I’ve been far removed from thinking like this. I’ve been told it’s martyr-like, unnecessary, melodramatic, and so on. It’s been an unsustainable sort of life for me. I don’t even entirely remember what it was like. But I think I have to go back. I think I can learn. I’ve tried to love myself; to tell my heart that. I started this blog for the sake of doing so. But I have to earn that first. I’ve already set a standard for myself, some 9 years ago

Treating a Homeless Man to Dinner

Trigger Warning: Rape (mentioned, but no explicit details)

 

Strangers have asked me for handouts several times. Hasn’t this happened to everyone? And we walk away, or ignore them, or offer nothing more than a passing, half heart, “sorry?” I’m no exception. I feel nervous around strangers with weary faces and worn clothing asking me for food or money. My parents ignored them, and so did I.

A teacher (call her Ms. Sasha) inspired me to do differently. She told our class a compelling narrative of a woman who fought her would-be rapist in a different way.

In brief, this woman told the man he didn’t want to do this, he started crying, and she offered to take him out for coffee. They sat down and spoke for a while, until she said she had to go home.

“Wait; let me walk you back, it’s dangerous to walk alone.” Ironic, right? So he walks her back to her apartment, and he asks if he see her off to her room.

“After what just happened, I’m not comfortable with that,” she said.

“That’s completely understandable.” And the man left.

The next morning, she left her apartment building to find a bouquet of flowers by the door, with a note saying “To the woman who saved my life.”

Now my story isn’t nearly as amazing as that. During my stay in Santa Fe, seven homeless (I think?) strangers have asked me for money. I asked them what they needed it for, then offered to treat them to lunch at a nearby sandwich place. Two of them agreed; the other five just wanted money, to which I declined to provide.

The first was a woman with a car and a child. She needed money for gas to keep driving; there was somewhere she had to reach, and she had to get away from her husband. We talked about her story over lunch; it isn’t my story, so I won’t share. I shared a meal with her and her child, paid for a sandwich for the road, and $20 for gas.

The second was a man who wanted money for a six pack of beer. During our lunch, he told me this and asked, “Why’d you take the trouble to do this?” I asked him if he would have preferred the money for beer or this lunch. He thought about it. “I liked this. Better than being drunk.” I bought him a sandwich for the road.

 

Recently, I had my third such incident. In Chicago, plenty of people asked me for hand outs. The common line (and a clever one, I think) was “I’m 80 cents short of a meal; I’m hungry, can you help me out?” And honestly, what’s a dollar to me? But I’ll be perfectly honest; a lot of those people scared me. There was just something scary about the way they came up to me. A lot of them reminded me, for whatever reason, of someone who mugged me once upon a time (and I’ll never know if it was at gun point or by the end of a snicker’s bar). To my own shame, I didn’t take out nearly as many people for a meal as I could have. But I did once!

 

I had just eaten a late lunch in Chinatown and was on my way to board a train home. “Excuse me,” a man said. I stopped, nearly at the door, and turned to my left. Maybe thirty feet out was a man with a full trash bag walking up to me. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I just wanted to ask you something.” I smiled right there and put my hands up. He laughed at that and gave me that really classic line. He needed 80 cents for a meal. “Can you help a brother?” For some reason, I wasn’t scared of him.

“Sure, what do you want to eat?”

“Just want to be able to get a sandwich. I only need 80 cents to afford one.” We’re in Chinatown. I didn’t know there were sandwiches in Chinatown.

“Yeah. But where do you want to eat?”

“I. Uhh.” He seemed confused at this point.

“Come on, I’ll take you somewhere. You like spicy food?”

He called himself Brother Tony. He told me about this woman that sometimes gave him a job and a little bit of cash. Just that morning, she’d given him a bag of spare clothes, and he was counting his lucky stars. Said that he must have done something right because he found two blessings in one day. We didn’t talk much about his past; some homeless people I meet love to talk about their lives, and others really don’t want to mention it. But he seemed particularly grateful for the company. Just someone to talk to over a bowl of ramen.

I told him I was a student. We talked about what I studied, talked about the things I saw in Chicago, what I liked about it, what he liked about it. How cold the wind could be. How lovely newspapers are for warmth. The alleys. Riding the train all day just to be moving. What sleeping on the street is like. What eating out of a dumpster is like. What being alone is like. Trials of a sore and tired body. What hunger is. What depression is. Back to Chicago, and the night sky, especially at 4AM.

His profound parting words were that I was a blessing to him. I told him we do what we must to live and good luck.

 

 

Instinctual Anger

[This post doesn’t actually have a theme to it. It offers a little insight into my past, but I’m otherwise just talking about my anger issues that I never really resolved, personally. There is nothing to do with bipolar, depression, mania, or anxiety here, which are my usual topics]

I carried a little Blues-Clues key chain around middle school, and I rode the bus to school, often sitting in my seat singing along with N’sync or Hilary Duff from my headphones.

One time, another kid and his friend, who regularly made fun of me, took the key chain from me. I wanted it back, so I reached for it and told them to give it back to me, please. They laughed and kept throwing it back and forth to each other, taunting me as I reached for it again and again. This wasn’t new. But what was new was that the windows behind them were open. And for a few passes, when I realized that the windows were open, I just stared at Blues Clues fly back and forth maybe three or four times.

I leaped from my seat into the kid. I crashed my shoulder into him. I smashed my forehead against his jaw. I elbowed his armpit. I stomped down on his ankle with the intent to break it. I yanked his wrist to my mouth; I bit his thumb and pulled. It was at that point he let go of the key chain, and I stopped immediately. I took it and went back to my seat, put my headphones back on, and returned to singing to the tune of Hilary Duff’s “Why Not,” like nothing happened. And I never really thought about it again.

There was a lie that I told myself while growing up, for the longest time, even into my late teens. “I’m not an angry or hateful person.” I believed in love, I believed in kindness, I went out of my way to be kind, even cultivated an appreciation of having others receive. In part, my self-hatred approved of redeeming myself by giving. In another part, I wanted my life to be helpful to others. So the idea that I was an angry person was, to say the least, unacceptable.

I was bullied a lot as a kid. But I denied the bullying to myself. I lied about it to my parents. Thinking back on it, I have no idea how I justified that the middle school nickname “chigger” (explained to me as a Chinese nigger) was somehow not a mean gesture. I have no idea how I repressed the anger in myself. Most people treated me as a weirdo, most people found me annoying, and I was beaten up somewhat regularly on the bus, if not verbally abused. I told myself at the time, “This just makes me feel really sad, but I deserve it,” or maybe I told myself “they’re just confused and this is how they interact with me,” or maybe I just accepted it as my place. But there were a few instances where something snapped. When another kid was punching me, I just sat there curled up until they stopped, giving whatever cries of pain he so desired from me. Violence towards me was internalized. I just took it and denied it ever happened, even to myself.

But the moment someone else, or something else, somehow related to me, got involved in even the slightest of wrongs?

One of my “friends” in middle school (call him Von) was a huge pushover. He was also really quirky; our entire group of four was. I bullied him a lot, which I’m not proud to say, and to this day I don’t even know why. I pushed his books off the table a lot for reasons I can’t even grasp; maybe I just thought that was how you treated your friends. Maybe I thought, if I could do that affectionately, then the way other people treated me was just a weird form of affection. But I digress.

His books were on a table, next to me, and he got up to go to the bathroom or something; he wasn’t at his seat at the time. Someone else wanted his chair, so he casually just takes the chair, moving it to another table. I told him that Von was sitting there.

“Well he’s not her-”

I hooked my foot behind his knee and pulled him forward. I lunged my mouth down towards the hand that was holding the chair. I bit down.

Yet another incident was in 4th grade, just elementary school. I had the habit of keeping scissor blades taped to the bottom of my shoes when it was lunch time (another story entirely).
A little background: my father is a huge martial arts buff. He wanted me to get into martial arts. He showed me things now and then; I was always afraid of him when he did that, because he always showed by demonstration, usually hitting me, which I felt hurt, though he always said he wasn’t really hitting me (probably true, from his perspective). I did learn a few things, though.
A friend of mine was being picked on by three bullies. Let’s call the big bully Parker. At first, like everyone else around, I just watched, half averting my gaze, standing on the sidelines. I wasn’t close enough to hear what was being said. But as some point, Parker pushes my friend. And his friends start pushing him. And all three of them are pushing him, laughing.
I didn’t even say anything. I walked up to Parker. They stopped briefly, probably to say something to me. I only remember two thoughts: the elbow is strong: the jaw is weak.

At a later age, my anger manifested less violently, albeit more frequently. Instead of sitting and having my parents shout at me, I started shouting back. We started having yelling fits more and more often, though this was a gradual build up over six or so years. I sometimes yelled furiously at people talking to me, though very rarely (which became more and more frequent over the years), about how they decided to treat someone else.

But at the least, by the time I reached high school, I recognized that I was violent. Memories like the ones I listed above prompted me to take a vow of nonviolence and sincerely study nonviolent resistance, but I still felt outbursts of rage from time to time, given a reason. Perhaps my self esteem has grown enough to feel angry about wrongs to me, as I often end up feeling towards my father.

Since going to college and getting away from my parents, anger has become foreign to me again. It mostly sparks again from time spent with my parents. I can happily say that my temper is provoked far less frequently; I can’t say I did anything to cause that. At least, I try to think about what made me angry and how I responded, when it does happen now. At least I’m not denying my anger, though. I might even try to deal with it in a mature and appropriate fashion, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

My Spiritual Dance

Spoiler Alert: References to Babylon 5 (an amazing Sci Fi series, by the way). So not really a spoiler, but there are ideas in here that are almost exactly like those in Babylon 5.

A psychosis episode at summer camp provided me a particular insight. It was the most spiritual occurrence in my life.

If there is divinity, I have not felt its touch from various holy books, nor sermons, nor followers who live out the word of their God or gods. No prayer brought me connection; no meditation accessed my soul. Neither the Christian-rock-rhythm of praising Jesus nor the more classic Orthodox choir rendered a divine beauty to me, as beautiful as they both were. And since that one experience of psychosis, I’ve never so much as glimpsed divinity.
But if there is such thing, then I saw it, on that one summer night, as I danced in swirls of sparkling stardust (the very same stuff which I was made from): stardust that wasn’t really there, but I knew they were there.
A “spiritual belief” spawned, one based in the connectivity of all things that lived. As a metaphor, I took the flame as symbolic of the soul; the carrier of the flame was the body.

—————————————————————

Somewhere between a star and my eyes, there are light particles, which I take in by the millions; we name their collective “starlight.” How are distant, giant spheres of fusion so beautiful? How are things so far removed from Earth still so striking to my soul? Perhaps it is because they are so far removed, saved from the tragedies of human dreams, that they seem wonderful.

Such is my fascination that I re-imagined stars into fairy-like entities, who both watched the dreams of Earth and commemorated the lost ones, so that the wonder of dead hope was not entirely lost.

Candles: I thought of them as bearers of the smallest flames, like our bodies which bear souls. No soul dances the same way as the next. No flame burns quite the same way. Once either goes out, whether flesh or fire, the particular movement ceases. And it will never come again, though other movements will come, who may offer moves all the same.

Stars were something brighter, more brilliant, or maybe they were just a different kind of fire. A dog has a different sort of soul, right? Maybe it doesn’t. What is a soul? What is a fire? Does the question, or the answer for that matter, detract from the value? I loved that light.

I loved that light. Please listen to me.

I love that light, and the fire, and the fire’s dance.

And light is light, no matter the kind, and fire is fire, no matter the kind. And all of us dance. And all of us do what we must do, to dance. Whether we raise three children, steal loaves of bread, recklessly drive cars, down nine shots of Vodka, we are dancing. We are dancing. I love dancing. I love our fires. Let us live; let us burn.

Maybe, after understanding that, we can try to dance together, when we see how beautiful all dancing is.

Stars remain as the example I look to. Look at how those lights dance; look at what their dancing makes, together. They dance a beautiful movement, with their own movements that do not step on the movements of others. And they watch us, seeing how we dance.

But seriously! What if some race of creatures watches us, as we watch stars? Please, I beg, do not show them a dance of death where flames eat away at one another. We all burn out eventually; we need not perform the service for one another.

So I light a candle, and I watch it. I watch how it dances. I might light two candles, and just watch how they dance. I remember two people, and how they live. I see how the small fires do not eat away at each other, yet make something beautiful together. I want that something beautiful to be made betwixt my soul and another’s: and another’s: a whole planet’s worth: a night sky’s dance.

———————————————————

As this is a blog with the goal of conversing with my depression, it would be remiss of me to not (at least briefly) discuss how depression affects this view. Or rather, how this view offers a frame for understanding my depression.

If you’ve read my other posts, you may note that I use a gray imagery for depression. Now imagine a gray fire. Imagine all the fires, gray. The light is no longer there as the shades blend into one thick fog. Imagine the only separation of wax and flame being the movement of the flame. Imagine the movement being obscured, as all shades of gray roll into one heavy thick blob. You know it’s there, but there’s no more dance. There is life without the living; fire without the dancing.

Now be that gray, self perceiving, burning candle, where the external eyes see only as well as the inner eye does. If you can do that, then you have the best explanation I can offer for what it is like to be depressed, in my shoes.

The Gray Baby: Depression’s Heir

I’m trying to write about depression; it is REALLY hard. How do I describe it? This is my second attempt at it; you can find the first here.

Depression, as a concept, is extremely accessible to me. I feel connected with the gray like I would be with a lover. Our time together has begun to fuse as one. In fact, I’m most comfortable talking about depression with other people, simply because I know myself best in that context. I have no fear of misrepresenting myself within that sphere because, well, I feel like I belong in that sphere. I feel like I’m always in that sphere.

Yet depression offers little profound experiences, except for the thing itself. I mean that I can’t really talk passionately about that one day where I sat in my room, lying on the floor for 11 hours, hardly moving save to use the bathroom once. There is something profound in the observation of it (just trying to imagine what strength of emotional gravity can root someone like that); there is something profound in having gone through that. But the experience, itself, gave birth to nothing else meaningful. The weight of the deadness speaks for itself, but it says nothing. And so there is no feeling to bring out of it and into other realms of life.

When my dog died, mid freshman year of college, I felt moved. Tuffy was my best friend. I’d rant at her, sometimes ask her about homework; she’d lie with me, next to the couch, waiting for her next ear scratching session. We hung out together; she understood me when I was tired, and I understood her when she was excited. For quite a while, my line anchored on life was her existence; we were pals, and I’d live as long as she did. So when she died, so did that very tangible promise to continue existence. Knowing that I wasn’t there for her passing grieved me. I knew death of a family, and I knew loss of something so intimately close to me that I considered it a physical extension of myself. Now I knew the loss of another soul once entwined with mine.

But see, that experience offered mourning, catharsis, growth, regret, appreciation, guilt, and movement. Oh, the movement, that these feelings would transition, develop, and ultimately become something of me, and not just a memory. To have moved on in handling the event yet holding to the parts which gave it meaning and continue to grieve me today: that painful loss birthed something else profound, and the time afterwards inherited something from before.

Intense experiences of depression don’t do that for me. Perhaps, when I “overcome” depression as a whole (and who knows if that will ever happen), the time afterwards will inherit meaning and movement. But not right now. Not for the past several years. Not after each recurring and frequent incident of stillness, or irrational irritability at ones I cared for. The bouts of pervasive hopelessness ultimately pushed people further from me. The successively less fruitful, less purposeful days, culminating into darkness, did not know dawn: just a realization of how much was lost and how much that didn’t matter. That realization opened the way for more, only inviting bouts of unworthy risings-out-of-bed or uncaring settlings-into-sleep.
And even now, when depression strikes with less intensity, I still have little to show for it. I came from the fog, and I am partly made from the fog. The other half was obscured; now seeing the light of possibility, it remembers nothing, since it was never awake to experience, yet it must deal with the threat of being consumed and vanishing again.

 

Perhaps, then, I have liberty to say that depression offers a single gift. I must leave the place inside my skull.

Mixed Depression: What?

Mixed depression sounds weird, but this is the definition: symptoms of both mania and depression are simultaneously present OR the symptoms of mania rapidly cycle with those of depression. Before I talk about this, here is my disclaimer. Mixed depression is not very well understood. It is probably very different for a lot of people. It may be easily confused with generally confusing life experiences. Nonetheless, here is my take on discussing my own mixed depression. So!

To review…

Mania  is roughly defined as the high of bipolar. You might think this only includes feeling great: high energy, high motivation, confidence, happiness. But there is such thing as too much; for me, anxiety is also common. Psychosis (out-of-reality experiences) can happen. I wrote a little bit about my mania; you can click the link at the beginning of this paragraph.

Depression is super hard to explain. Those who experience it can access the idea. Everyone has a rough notion what it is. But let’s stick with the concept of a graying-down of yourself. The gray is profound in how it un-paints the bold emotions of all other colors.

It’s a lot easier to imagine the rapid-cycling aspect of Mixed Depression: from soaring after dreams to sinking in apathy. That up-and-down keeps me permanently disorientated on how to navigate my anxiety attacks and sudden profound grays. But let’s talk about the combined aspect of Mixed. How can someone both feel an immense rush of thought and energy yet feel fatigued, apathetic, and irritable? Aren’t they polar opposites?

I think a part of the psyche must snap for the two to combine. Futility can mix with infinity to create an Overwhelming. Mania opens all the doors, yet depression tires to just think about crossing thresholds. But the manic keeps finding new doors, throwing them open, peering down the halls… And how much do you need to be reminded of all the things you aren’t doing? There’s so much that’s fascinating, so much that’s beautiful, so much that you believe you should be pursuing. And yet, this part of the brain is running far too fast to keep up with. You’re tearing in half.

This sensation pierces perception; everything is marvelously possible, yet you are so im-possible. That girl’s hair is beautiful; you can’t marvel at it. That table is really artistic; you can’t appreciate it. So begins this overwhelming of the soul, as it is weighed down by the very force which drives forward. You are at once pulled once tempted and at another denied. There are no brakes.

What I have described may sound slightly similar to “too high” part of mania. I cannot emphasize enough that is still beautiful and seductive, burning the candle by three ends (and at the moment of suffocation, absolutely maddening). Simultaneously experiencing mania and depression (for me) is not enticing, nor glorious, but maddening in a very different way.

So what’s a day like in the shoes of mixed depression? I tried writing a poem about it, but it came out a little bit more like a dual-perspective, which wasn’t what I was going for. I never finished it, but you can look at the prototype.

What’s Over There?

The most wide horizon with the most open arms;
You could not ask more from a lover.
I am lost in the embrace of perspective. So much

Abyss, that I know where feet can run into
a million amber fields that I cannot feel the
texture of, nor taste the honey clover. Such little

Bees that bring life! They could sting, but they
dance! And I, with them, am welcome to this
ballroom of swirling clouds and a windy gaze. Clouds,

how you take on other possible forms, taunting me
to imagine what I fancy. But I see you for only what
you are; clay that I lack the hands to mold.

My current attempt is an active journal. At various time intervals, I jot down what I’m doing and how I’m feeling. Just little tidbits here and there. Obviously, I have to get a time where I’m experiencing mixed depression, and habituating myself to this regular task is a challenge in of itself. But when that finishes (and who knows how long it’ll take for my mood to turn that corner), I’ll show it off. Take it as something to look forward to.
In the meantime, I wrote a (very) little memoir-esque piece. Have this as a lingering afterthought on mixed depression.

Roger and Kevin talked about a new laptop model: the label, of no consequence. I remember the taste of the graphic card’s name: Nvidia, for gaming. Oh how luscious I knew that name to be, how beautiful it rendered pixels. I relished in the use of Nvidia; I even felt intimate with the sounds, the way “N-vi” involved the teeth and the lips to say, and how sweet the “d-ia” came out, at the end.
All this, recollected in the space of three syllables as a vague passing, like a recognizable landmark rushing by as you stare from the window of a train, but I felt nothing. I appreciated none of it. I was still and seated at the lunch table. My constant was the clump of untouched mashed potatoes before me. And the word Nvidia, like so many other words, blurred into a gray horizon of indistinguishable distant objects, to which I had no access, and for all my attempt to grasp these marvels, the window only fogged up.
But the brief flashes of light kept coming up: the recognizable landscape of the conversation between Roger and Kevin, as words moved from grand amazement over someone’s elegant math solution to rowdy laughter over a terrible joke. I knew I was passing skyscrapers; I knew they were beautiful; somehow, I could grasp that there was beauty and that I longed. The train made no stops.

Chicago Poems

We Wanted Coats

Not even “hello” passed between us
Strangers, who knew Chicago’s
Night winds.
Only cigarette puffs – the offer to share
at a 15 minute bus wait –
something warm.

 

Solitary

Chicago train stations have warm lights to
stand under, but people don’t huddle. Why?
Are they scared? Aren’t they cold? Do they need two
feet apart from others? Two whole feet!? There’s a lot of
People here, standing out of the light. Why?
Under dressed, exposed ears, red noses, for
what purpose? They didn’t prepare well and
now shiver, now alone, like this city.

 

Half a Pizza and a Free Pepsi Later…

We laughed, she smiled, left me the check.
She wrote a note with it:
“Thank you, have a great night,”
with a smilie faced punctuation.

 

 

I’m supposed to blog once a week, so I told myself. Then I unleashed a few blog posts, and now I’m late.  So as I continue to polish and simultaneously write 5 different posts (which will all likely come out within a day of each other back to back), I decided to share some poems that I’ve been working on. All of these have been inspired by my stay in Chicago; there are three more I’m working on too, but those haven’t even passed the 2nd Draft stage. These, at least, while not perfectly clean, made it to a “presentable” stage. So here are the three poems. If they get polished up, I’ll create a separate post for the poem.

That Vivid Color

Trigger Warning: Suicide
.
.
.
.

 

I can’t say that I’m experienced with suicide. There are some who have tried multiple times, committed to psychiatric wards, rushed to hospitals… I’m not among them. I’ve only had a taste. But it was hard for me to even try.

Once, I laid out two bottle’s worth (100 pills) of aspirin and five glasses of water. I started swallowing. I didn’t make it very far. At all.

Even thinking about slicing through my neck causes a flinching reaction. The imagination, itself, tries to stop the full motion of killing yourself. It feels uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. There’s a difference between imagining a knife cutting your neck and imagining you cutting your neck with a knife. The moment you have to allow the knife to kill you, the subconscious leaps out, trying to scramble even the simple thought. And forget about imagining commanding the muscles to pull the knife across the neck. To pull, to cut, and begin dying; conjuring that all as one scene is surprisingly hard.

Perhaps this difficulty comes with a certain perspective; those who want to do it, who imagine it with serious dimension, face a subconscious block. This block functions at the point of the brain communicating with the muscle. Give the thought to kick the stool out from under your feet. Go on, think about those muscles. Tell them. “Do it. Kick it. Kick the stool out.” You are blocked at the point of execution. Your brain just won’t send the impulse.

This inspired my serious contemplation on how a successful suicide would work. I knew I couldn’t end it all in one swift action, no matter how indirect I made it. The best idea I came up with for one quick movement was cutting my wrists to bleed out, but even if I did that, there were chances that I wouldn’t cut deep enough or that I’d freak out and call for help.

So how about a death that takes baby steps? How about overdosing, one pill at a time? It would be a terrible and painful way to die, but I didn’t have to focus on that. I didn’t even research how awful it would be for aspirin to start destroying my internal organs. I’m not even sure if overdosing on aspirin for suicide is a reasonable option. I didn’t think about any of that; the back of my mind knew that the ambiguity might ultimately allow me to succeed. After all, I took medicine all the time. It was just one pill after the other.

I put myself through a suicide mental boot camp. Every time I took medicine, I imagined just how okay it was, noted how perfectly fine I felt. Better, in fact. Took a little extra medicine. I recreated the scene of making it further and further down the line of pills. When I imagined swallowing those little white angels, I didn’t count numbers. I thought to myself, “this is Monday’s, and then Tuesday’s, and then Wednesday’s.” I did this until I was perfectly comfortable. No anxiety, no repulsion, no heart rate spike. I even took a day’s worth without freaking out, all in one go. Then two day’s worth.

When I decided I would do it, I knew, deep down, I wasn’t ready. But I couldn’t think about it like that. I just laid them out, lined them up, poured some water…

I often slipped into a place where I wished to be dead: specifically to no longer exist. Mere survival was grating at best and excruciating at worst. I went to bed each night wondering how alone I’d feel. I wondered if next day would bring too much fatigue to walk up the hill or too little heart to appreciate the sunset. Maybe both. Maybe just ache.

The grayness and grating got to me after a while. I was less of a person than I was three years ago. The effort to function was, itself, fruitless, yet so demanding of energy. I had to put my soul into so much as attending class, and I could feel how little soul there was to use. It is here, at this intersection of fading and grating, that suicide became a feasible idea. To cease existing became more and more appealing; each day of worthless attempts at friendship, which I did not know why I wanted, added to the reason of nonexistence.

But the kicker was the things-gone-wrong: the people I hurt, the ex that discarded and ignored me, the dreams that I never made closer. They brought intense bouts of overwhelming emotions. They were flaws which led to shame, bleeding into my gray world as the most vivid color of disgust and failure. And as I was keeping myself alive, I was led to guilt, which I tried to fight with self sacrifice (for others) and pride (in my talents). But they didn’t take away that vivid color. Only death could, and I was responsible for that scythe.

There are people who know me and read this blog. I want you all to know that suicide is no longer an issue for me. While I don’t have the support system that would be healthy for me, I do have professional help. Still, I’m reminded regularly of that vivid color, but I can see other colors too. So I try. It’s a lot easier now.

So, the Knife

This is a clarification. I am not encouraging self mutilation. The voice I use in this writing is for the sake of clear and smooth communication.

Trigger Warning: Self harm, psychosis

 

 

There is a chest squeezing anxiety right along the sternum; it makes breathing feel sharp and shallow; you aren’t sure if your heart is at one time sinking or at another rattling the cage.

That anxiety sometimes comes with this: “I must cut myself.”
If you want to picture that feeling, think very hard about the tip of your nose, or your pinky finger, or your toes. When I do that, there’s a tingling feeling, almost a tension. I become extremely aware of, say, how uncomfortable my toe might be while wearing shoes. Now take that feeling, intensify it a little bit, and place it on, say, your thigh. It is in the shape of a cut. It has a similar ache to a cut. And you can (and do) imagine the feeling of sharp pain.
This feeling should be immediately revolting (one would think), but from imagining that cut, longing and relief follow. I really don’t know why that is, but it offers a taste of release from the anxiety which demands my blood.

Mixed into this cutting feeling, there is condescending hate. Something disapproves of me. Your body is a lie which veils the condition of your soul. You are bloodied and bleeding; embrace that. You should know more pain. You should be scarred for your wrongs. Your happiness requires payment in blood. I often bring the blade to my skin. I press. Then I try to pull. Then there is blood.

I feel a fulfillment of justice; this was right. Yet I know that feeling is wrong and twisted; it shouldn’t be necessary to hurt myself to appease my hatred. I feel disgusted at what I’ve done. That disgust is also proper in the sense of justice; I am someone to be disgusted at. The chain goes on, but at the end, there is an intense rush of almost maniacal pleasure and grief. This entire experience is so convoluted.

Sometimes, I sit back and let the feelings wash over me before caring for the wound, which is in of itself comforting. On a rare occasion, I lose control. I can’t properly explain this part. A maniacal laughter takes over, moving my bones. I become a watcher to my widening eyes, unnatural grin, and small convulsions of a flailing arm or a small lurch forward. The laugh tries to become a cry; there are sometimes tears. The whole event is funny in how pathetic I am and how ridiculous self harm seems. But even more pathetic and ridiculous is how relieved I am to have done it, yet also pained and ashamed of giving in again. The collapse, of seeing myself as anyone at all, is paralyzing in a very different way from depression. I am obsessed with the knife. All my responsibilities are now about the wound. My identity has to be redetermined by a cost-benefit analysis of positive and negative emotions. My worth has to be recalculated by how awful or how understandable it was for me to do this. The self threatens to cave in; so I put the image back together.

I am most terrified not of the wound, nor of anyone finding out, and not even of the emotional self abuse that follows the physical. See, when I hold that knife to my thigh, some small part of me desires the collapse of my self. I scare myself for wanting that. Let me emphasize the word collapse. My entire personhood becomes a barrage of criticism, questions, and judgments, which are not really about me (they’re about the cutting and all the emotions that were part of it). I’m gone during this process.

When I drink (by myself), at some point, I’ll stare in a mirror. If I still see myself, I’ll drink more. I’ll keep asking, “how many drinks does it take to stop seeing a monster in the mirror?” This is an accurate portrayal of how much I want to forget myself. Maybe even be someone else. Either way, I want to get out of my head. But no matter how much alcohol goes in, I’m still here. I can’t forget me.

I have a secret delight in vanishing. It satisfies a lingering desire to be dead; I know this feeling from depression. It is different from wanting to kill yourself; that is a distinctly intense and terrifying act to attempt. But entertaining the idea of simply being dead is easier; I think most people have done it at some point. However, the idea hangs over me like a persistent gray cloud and a strong breeze. Everything looks a little less exciting because of the cloud, and some force makes the simple act of my heart beating a little more difficult.
But sometimes, I can’t handle being alive. The wind is too strong; I have to focus on proper breathing or else hyperventilate. Basic tasks, like proper food or accomplishing gratifying achievements, become simply uninteresting to do. Yet I’m not numb. I care. I want. And that drives me crazy. I have to get out. If I’m stuck in the cave, then I’ll break it open.

And so, the knife.

The experience of the collapse is surreal. You hear things, or think you hear things, that aren’t really there. You offer thoughts without going through the thinking process. Psychosis is normally terrible. But this psychosis, in particular, is purely destructive. No terror can persist when a claw scrapes the side of your skull, dragging away all the worthless parts of your brain.

Gaming Lacks the Sensation: “Tremendous”

Video gaming is stimulating, engaging, enraging, and fulfilling. It brings involvement, community; it offers challenge and reward; for the mind, it is immersing. Gamers have abused and been abused in games; they have fallen out of chairs laughing; they have felt steaming anger; a spectrum of emotions is very available. There are casuals, geniuses, hard workers, professionals; we are many kinds, and we see many things. We call our various experiences: fails, out plays, trolls, lols, epic…  I would not, however, describe any of my gaming memories as tremendous.

Consuming? Yes. Intense? Yes. My life? At times, yes. But not tremendous. That word is reserved for a special kind of sensation, which pervades the very marrow.

I’m not bashing on video gaming, nor am I promoting “real life.” I’ll be the first to say that gaming has saved me, in those long times when I could speak to no one. It continues to save me now and then. “I’m going to beat this game, or I’m going to kill myself.” In such despair, any feelings of self worth are worth attaining. I’ll also say that gaming has further isolated me from other problems. But life does that. Gaming is just another activity in that regard.

It, however, happens to be a very wholesome activity. It provides much of what I crave. In a game, I have peers, I have the safety of distance, I have challenges, and I have stimulation. I’ll fail at some places, I’ll make some enemies, but I’ll have good times, and I’ll make my own gratification. Most importantly, I’ll be involved, and I will feel. But I crave something else; I want better games. I want games that take my soul. I want more of my human sensibilities to connect to the virtual; the less I think about the aspects of the game as parts of a game, the more I feel them as if they were actual things. Strategy shouldn’t be a coded formula to be discovered; it should involve truly out thinking a dynamic set of possibilities. Roleplaying should be less playing and more role. And so on, so forth; I want better games. I say that because I want more from my gaming experience (and, if it were possible to do this without better games, I would).

Bear with me for a small tangent.

In life, you must survive (quitting involves suicide, which is a different conversation). So you, at minimum, try to survive in the least painful way possible. If also possible, you try to actually live; fill and surround yourself with the things that ease difficulties and bring fulfillment. Some of us are very bad at this; some of us try and don’t know what really works. You can quit trying to get a better life for yourself, but quitting survival doesn’t work so well. Suicide is a difficult and complex venture. So you’re forced, at bare bones, to take the path of least resistance. There’s effort and suffering to that. In a game, you can step back at any time. Sure, quitting might feel awful. You might be hooked on sensations of success and achievement from that game. But quitting a game is, generally, easier than killing yourself.

So even if I want more from a game or want to play a better game, when I do continue playing the same game in the same way, I’ve chosen to do so, more than I’ve chosen to continue living life. Because the effort it takes to quit a game far surpasses the effort to quit my life. Perhaps that fact keeps the gaming experience from ever being tremendous. Meaning found in games can’t reach deep into my bones because the games never feel necessary.

I admit to my possible bias. I call the highs of mania tremendous; the sensations and delusions which accompany the flight are nothing short of soul shifting and bone changing. That I am chasing after a dozen brilliant ideas at the same time has more impact than feeling as if I am. But I would expand the meaning of tremendous to experiences I’ve had on Earth as well.
A classmate (call him Cameron) once stared at me when I said “I’m fine.” He asked if I was sure. And then he just stared. And he kept staring when I hesitated to answer and continued to hesitate. That stare was tremendous. I never felt so sure of the sincerity of someone not close to me.
Someone hugged me in midst a total and complete psychological breakdown as a first response before anything else. It was completely surprising. That sensation of comfort was tremendous.
A bar of chocolate was left for me soon after I returned to campus after Christmas break, with a note saying “Welcome Back.” By far, it was the most mild of the experiences listed just above. But the gesture was also tremendous in the way it reached into the very way I walked around, for the rest of the day.

Gaming has never done that for me. No pentakill on League of Legends, no sudden come back as a hard working team, no tournament victory… Nada. Maybe that’s because I’m not a professional. But where I am now, no matter how much I rely on games for sense of community and achievement, they never offer me the tremendous sensations. Are these sensations important?

In my most exposed and painful moments, the weight of my emotional turmoil is enough to crack open my bones. I can taste my marrow. I run from this suffering, often by gaming, having no other option; it is ironic that, when I do end up in this bone cracking suffering, the gaming experiences do nothing to strengthen me at the time. As I become aware of my thick blood, thinking about how much better it would be were it to spill across the dirt, I’m also aware of the thickest riches deep in my structure. There, the ripples of those tremendous sensations have changed my very fibers. And as the marrow spills out for me to so harshly judge, I feel a little less despair and hate because of those changes. I can’t explain why. There’s something about a meaningful thing.