March 18 2014 to my friends and family

I began to write this post in a heated stroke of emotion. Blogger however decided to crash and not save the draft. I was furious. But it gave me time. I take for granted the healing power of the passage of time. Just a few moments can be enough to hear that kind word from a friend, or the good news you've been waiting for. Along the lines of the previous, yet lost post, I feel blessed to say again how lucky I have been in life. It's true I usually don't maintain the most positive perspective of life. I justify my pessimism by being practical, or sensible in the way I think. I justify my behavior with feelings and practical thinking rather than positive truths presented by others. I am in the world alone for this reason most of the time. It works when I don't mind being alone. But lately I mind it. I mind it a lot actually. I've lived too long thinking I can take it or leave it. I can be a rock on my own. Trouble is, I've let some one in my life. That doesn't jive with that old thinking. I need her. I miss her. And I never mind her presence. It took me too long to find out that I need her.

I've rarely stopped in life to acknowledge publicly how lucky I am to have the people in my life that I do. Even when they go. Most of my family are constant examples to me of the beauty of life and the human experience, an experience that I rarely identify with. My extended family shows me each day what it means to love, not for motive, but just for the sake of love.

My friends have mostly come and gone. With them I have seen the ugliest betrayals, selfish desires, as well as tenderness, loyalty, honesty, and most of all trust. Unfortunately there are times when these lessons and examples get confused in my mind and effect the reality that I see. I make mistakes constantly. I've made many lately.

I have been honored to know and love some one for nearly a year now. Yes she's still here. It amazes me every day. Maybe I'm just self destructive, but I keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Whatever the case, whatever may come I want her to know that I am infinitely stronger, better, and incredibly lucky to have her in my life. Sarah, I love you. I can't express that well enough in writing, but hopefully I can learn to show it more in action.

Among those mentioned above I should also acknowledge a few people I've worked with over the last few years. There are few strangers you will meet in life who will take a chance on you, and even mentor you through life. To those at the shop I say thank you. You've done more for me than you know, and have given my mad mind a place to escape the world.

I also must single out the Grooms family. You gave to me a love of theater that will possess a part of me forever. My time on the stage may well be over, but I will forever benefit from the growth I endured, mentally, emotionally, socially, professionally, and spiritually in those months. You have played a pivotal roll in my life for good.

Among the named, I feel I must... She who will remain nameless. You taught me all these lessons. I owe you my gratitude for that, but owe you no debt, nor the kindness of naming you.

As I reach the end of this reflective post, I feel utterly unfinished. I am lucky. I've known many good people, and very few who would cause me harm. I guess the point of all this is to say that these are the people that have made me what I am today. At first glance that may not impress much satisfaction on your mind. But consider this: I who struggle with depression, anxiety, and a variety of other emotional and mental afflictions, am still here. I am for the most part good, happy, and at peace. (Not to say I don't have my down days, and I've yet to figure out how to make this life work for me.) But I'm still here. And in the memory of so many lost kindred souls who have made that last final decision, I thank you all for my life. You have each literally saved it.

Things forgotten

The bravest thing I've ever done was try to kill myself. You'd be amazed how much constitution it requires to attempt such a thing. It was also the most painful experience of my life. The emotional toll of doing something like that, and putting my best friend through it as well outweighs anything I've ever endured physically. Freedom is never easy, and requires bravery. I was desperately seeking freedom when I wanted to die. Ironically, surviving the urge for death gave me a freedom I hadn't previously considered: apathy. I only held on to the one good thing I could believe in at the time, my friend. After a while that gave room for others in my life, but only just. The truth is I've cared for very little since that night, partially I'm sure because I've been on various medications, but mostly due to the realization of how insignificant we really are as individuals. While it's true that one soul can change the world, unless you are that one soul you really are just a part of a statistic. My moment of frustration turned my own identity upside-down. Before I was anonymous, a single face with a unique perspective and unimaginable prospects. Then I became an individual. I became the patient to an E.R. Doctor, the attempted suicide to the paramedics and police, and the burden to a friend. I became a statistic that night. In a way, I entered the world. My young and quiet heart, with all it's passion and fire died that night. I wanted to be condemned. I wanted answers that could not be answered. I wanted to shed my life and be forgotten. I wanted what I already had, to be anonymous. It's funny how we think shouting at the world will somehow turn its attention elsewhere. It took no small effort to decide to go before God on my own terms and demand answers to the small problems of my life. It's no wonder that all the passions which drove me into such selfishness has been stripped away from me. I used to see beauty in the contrast of pain.

October 22

Days run together. I often forget them and can't keep them separate in my mind. I have this strange apathy that washes over me. It takes away

webMD post and whatever

Hello strangers. . . My anxiety keeps me from seeking out real help, so I thought I'd get some thoughts from the internet. Here's the rundown: I'm 32 yr male, single, shy, I've always had anxiety. When I was a kid I some times wet myself in the class room because I was too "shy" to raise my hand and be excused. Before I finished the 4th grade, I was taken out of school for unrelated reasons, and lived an isolated life with family in a semi bush-like setting with little social activity outside of church on sunday. My upbringing was extreme. It's understandable that in my adult life I have had anxiety and trouble fitting in to the world, as well as some depression to go along with it. Here are my thoughts now; I've been away from that isolated lifestyle for 13 yrs now, and still struggle with anxiety/depression. In my twenties I went through long phases of fear because I felt dangerous to others, as well as myself. The best way I can describe it is like a craving in my abdomen. For years I tried different methods to ease the feeling- everything from working myself to exhaustion, to gorging myself on various foods that seemed to help some. After an attempted suicide, I've been able to find some peace and help that I've very much needed. I've had lots of success with several depression meds, and have brought my anxiety to a manageable level- but I still have days (like today) when I am completely lost to something unreal, that tells all of my instincts to curl up in a ball and rock myself to either sleep or exhaustion. Every time I want to rip my stomach out of my body as if it is some foreign invader. Today I locked myself in my room and couldn't be bothered by anyone. I couldn't even take the trip across the hall (3 ft) to use the bathroom. I know anxiety well, I've learned to deal with it since I was an infant. I feel like there is something really wrong that comes out in force when I have these bad days. I my early twenties I sincerely thought I was schitzo. . . But my doc at the time treated me for PTSD (my life being the traumatic event) I've since gotten a handle on a lot of things and don't feel dangerous to anyone, nor do I think I ever could be- a long cry from 23. But I still feel like there is something sleeping inside waiting to break out. The thing that concerns me most today is doing and saying things that I don't remember when I get really stressed- like moving things, turning things on and leaving them, and putting thinks in strange places. . . I sound crazy to me. obviously life is going to be a different experience for me than most. . . good thing i'm an artist. But I would like to not put things in my fridge that don't belong there, or at least remember when I do. Ok, so there's my novel... crossing my fingers and hoping I don't wake up to white coats in the morning. but i'm seriously concerned that I'm slowly going nuts................. Obviously I have a lot on my mind. all the time. aside from trying to maintain a grip on myself, or at least what little sanity I may have left, I am also troubled now with good complications in life. Love, once again. But this one is different. So i've met some one amazing... well reconnected really. Reconnected again that is. That's a story for another day. She's amazing and sweet, and totally into me. :) But as I contemplate, and dare I say plan this new future, I am once again reminded that my mind is utterly broken as anxiety seems to threaten the future i'd like to create. I want to work. I want to be a part of the world. I want to be able to have all those things that a grown adult should have. . . yet so many of those things seem overwhelmingly difficult for some one who has trouble even placing an order in a restaurant he's never been to before. So i'm stressed. I can lock away the world for a few hours, or days, but eventually it demands entry to my life. I have one other close friend, on the verge of having no other close friends. Another story for another day. I have no job, no money, and really not sure how everything is going to work out in the end. I've gotten used to being a failure and an outcast. I'm in no danger of falling apart. I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of people coming and going. I don't want to lose my best friend, but I'm scared I may have to. It's not like it hasn't happened before. One thing I'm certain of is that I'm not willing to risk losing Sarah. (that's my love ;) ) She's it as far as i'm concerned. The world can fall apart and I don't care. She may be the last thing I will truly care about in life- the last thing I think i'm willing to care about. Everything else is just. . . some one else's story. Let some one else care. I think I'm ranting now. I may not even be making any sense at all. But that's ok. I'd rather write and not make any sense, than not be able to write at all. I think everybody needs to rant once in a while to know what they really want to say. So what do I want to say? Well the above is a slightly altered thread I posted on web MD just to see if I'm crazy or not. Why? Because I've got something really good in my life that I can't lose to my own failings. I really think if I do then I'm just done with the rat race altogether. I'll hit the road and never look back, and I'll almost certainly never try or care again. So yeah... it's pretty important to me that I find a way to make life work this time. The trouble is that I don't know how to do it. I've done the meds, I've done the therapy, i've taken and worked and lost pretty much every kind of job you could think of- some I was under qualified for, some that I was over, and some that I was just lucky to have. In the end they were most all lost the same way. Me. Not me as in intent, me as in I'm a grade A crappy human being who can't keep a job to save his life. What do you do when you wake up and the prospect of putting your feet to the ground is as if NASA has asked you to build them a new rocket that day? Well my feet hit the floor. Sometimes I even get my teeth brushed and put some cloths on, but more often than not something happens on the way to the front door and I may as well be a dead rocket scientist. So there you go world. That's day in my life. Give yourself ten or twelve of those a month and multiply that by your lifetime. So what is your genius advice to fix my problems that after thirty-two years of living with I can't even stay ahead of? Let's hear the answer that's gonna keep the pieces in place for me.

Ketchup!

For those of you who care (and even those that don't,) here's a bit of an update of my life for the past several months, and what I've been up to.

After a long and disappointing wait for some one I had no reason to believe would ever make a genuine effort at making a mends, other than the reasoning that I've simply always believed in them, I found myself wondering what was the point of my long social experiment of the previous 5 years.

I turned inward, to another project that I've been developing for almost the same amount of time. (No, not Hillbilly Flyer. That's been on a back burner ever since I decided that I really like to write stories VS. songs in '08, and especially since I broke my arm in 2011 and consequently unlearned the guitar. And it's not the script I started writing on my other blog. That one's been abandoned, or at least on hold since I lost all my notes for that story because my cell phone was a piece of crap.) Over the winter months I've immersed myself in the fictional world that began in my mind in 2007. A story of many complexities, it's remained in my mind where it could exist beyond the reach of the conscious mind and stay as fluid as time until now. I'm reluctant to admit that I have been in the process of trying to capture this dream-like imagining and orchestrate it into words on paper (and on machine.) So far just creating a chronology has taking up most my endeavors. But now that it is within the grasp of my conscious creative mind, I have begun slowly to write it.

So that's it. That's all I've been doing as far as recent memory.

A New Year

It's a new year. Feels like I should make some commentary. I don't have anything to say. There isn't much I care about anymore. Music bores me. I don't know any people. There's no image I want to capture. I don't even want to go anywhere. I can't sleep when I should- and I can't wake when I sleep. I dream a thousand dreams each night but never feel anything in them. I haven't dreamed of flying for years now- I used to all the time. My mind has no escape. What's worse is that it doesn't want to. I have few words anymore to tell anything by. I don't wait anymore, nor do I hope. I just sit. There is a vast difference between waiting and sitting. I have nothing to wait for. Maybe I never did.
When I was a kid I loved this time of year- the dawn of a new year. It used to mean something- another year older, a fresh beginning, putting behind the past and welcoming the new. . . What should I welcome this year. 2013. Even the number feels familiar and old, like I've done it already. I thought I saw a dime today that said 2014 on it, and I got excited. That's something new! I thought. Realizing the actual year gave my eyes the perspective needed to see it was just another dime stamped years ago. My eyes are tired. My soul feels nearly exhausted.
I've played in the same pool-hall for nearly ten years now. Two weeks ago I was called a cheat, not once, but twice in one night. I haven't been back yet. I had just regained a serious interest in the game.
I don't want to write. I don't want to play. I don't want to meet new people- I've had enough of them for quite a while. The old ones never really disappear. Give me a moment or two and I can recall everyone I've ever known. Parts or them may be missing, but none are ever forgotten. I should put that theory to pen and paper sometime. That would be an interesting list. I can't recall some of their faces, and names are easily duplicated, but sometimes it's a glimpse of hair in a certain light, or a scent that can bring a person rushing through my mind. I remember one tug on my shirt sleeve, or one moment of laughter, and everything about them is suddenly here again. Good and bad.
I stay awake until my eyes burn because I need to feel a desire for something. When I urge for sleep I have purpose. I have something to fight, or something to fall into. Either way I am fulfilled.
This year will bring me closer to whatever is coming, and further from what is gone. For that it will be a good year, but I will not welcome it all the same.

Christmas Gift

I wanted to paint you a horse.
But that's as far as I got.
A mangled debauchery makes not a good gift.
So I'll leave it as just a good thought.

I thought I might make you a song.
But my fingers can't figure a tune.
A dismembered melody hard on your ears is not one that you'd have me to croon.

So I sat with my pencil and paper in hand- a poorly sketched figure of horse, and just then- I thought up this poem to salvage the night.

I look at my clock. It's morning alright.

My heart has grown heavy. I've wasted my time- with only to show this ridiculous rhyme.
No beautiful pony. No soft serenade.
What good has it done, all the plans that I've made?

I wanted to paint you a pony.
That's as far as I got.
I'm ill-equipped at the moment you see.
But there's some gift just in the thought.