An Evening With A Friend and Learning What Depression Is

Sitting on a cup cushion chair and listening to.  Days later I understand that.  I understand better that my schizophrenia will run parallel to depression at points and expecting some sort of  bipolar snap to happen and coming back to them to poke them with a "what's wrong" is no way forward.  That's not how it works.  Not even close.  Shadow mimicry.

I have wondered the best way of going about describing the it that governs me.  Is this what you want?  Locked.  Tell me now!  I am afraid that if I do I will be interned again.  I feel small.  I feel frightened.  What is wrong with us?  I want to be bipolar.  I want to be depressed.  I want to be something else without lying about what I am.  Why can't it be that way?  I feel like garbage saying that, knowing the tolls of those pains from meeting them.  The pissing contest cesspool.  The grass is always greener.  Fukkoff.  Listening to each word and understanding dawning, the same loathing and disappointment and anger that froths inside me frothed and boils inside them too (in different ways); similar hiding places and outdoor faces are incorporated to further life.  The panic attacks are the same.

Whenever I talk about it, be the occasion among friends or sibs or to you, I immediately feel defective.  A waste of your time.  How is it you've navigated 32 years of life [28 of them with knowing enough junk to not get run over by a thing called a car out of pure ignorance (22 of them with knowing enough junk to not get run over by a thing called a car out of negligence)] and still fight with normality?  Well, if I knew, I'd put an end to it.

What we are does not need vivisection to be confirmed.  The most frustrating part is being forced to bridge gaps and justify my misgivings and "quirks."

Reality checks and tests.  I don't understand.  Negative!  Negative!  Negative!  Through study, I know how people are supposed to feel when things happen.  That's why I enjoy semaphore so much.  It helps me feel like I am a person too, regardless of what actually is.

Undamaged or compromised, I envy the feeling and find their company saturated and wonderful.  It is selfish.  It is not selfish.  Listening to a good friend helped me learn what actual depression is and what it costs each day.  Listening to a good friend helped me learn the gender multiplier and its complications and callousness.  Between light hearted turns of phrase and spikes of imagination, I grew to understand the true differences between us and I learned more than I ever thought I'd need to know about what that prison is like.  I hope I expressed what the view from inside my bars looks like too.

I am so glad I have the chance to compose this.  I'll try and encapsulate it in a more condensed form:

I try to only project positive.  No I don't LOL.  Can shoot that down in a heartbeat.  I must laugh out loud.  I cannot set the world on fire.  I certainly, however, do not try to project only positive.  The dives are there for the asking.  I do not suffer in silence.  My physical pain tolerance has not kept pace with my mental pain tolerance and that's okay.  I enjoy listening.  It helps me feel more safe and more sane.

I am running.

I am afraid.

The dissimilarities are glaring now.  Punishing heft of ocean swell.  A fair mistake to make?  In speaking with her, traveling the star systems made wonderful sense.  Collapsing interpersonal nonsense into two dimensions, we existed and could map one another in three.  It's kind of weird, bare with me.  Here we go:

For some time, several months, I'd convinced myself I was predominantly bipolar.  Cycling on and off and on and off in stints.  If I could just figure out the timing, I could use it to approach "normal".  Ride with it.  Go with it.  Do not fight it.  Above all, do not try to force the head spaces function and be aware of its gear before you interact with anyone.  I charted up many conversations about mania and engaged in shared tales of its absence in attempts to better understand its dimensions and myself and the loved ones I was engaging with.

Along those veins it became clearer and clearer that I did not know what I thought I knew about them.  What I thought I knew about her.   What I thought I knew about him.  Some beliefs stood pat, many were restructured.  Some were reinforced.  I am susceptible to a high and low line, but the thread that flows through all points on the chart is my schizophrenia.  The simplest and most base way to gauge who I am underneath the layer of my consciousness and awareness is that.  My "it." For her, it is depression.  The hard coded piece of yourself that can not be changed.  That I enjoyed the most about speaking with her is laughing about everyday bullshit.  Seeing the ledge and taking casual portraits for one-another at the edge of the world.  I've known highs and I've known lows, but I've never had to know the tar ocean depression.  I've been and am manic, I've been and am depressed, truth be tolled, I am just schizophrenic. The fabulous shock of the reminder that you are just as much and deserving to be part of the human race as the "normals" is a spark.

I am glad that our worlds have collided.  I will attempt to boil this down later.  I don't have to do this alone.

We are.

We still don't know what our conversion rate is.  We still have no explanation for why we burn so violently and brilliantly and sleeplessly and the only consolation is watching the sun cross the horizon line and light up the atmosphere like a pool of gasoline and scream and sing and howl to it from the highest ground we can find, should we be caught outdoors.  I don't know why.

We are.

I want to heal.  I want to burn. I am understanding depression with greater accuracy than I ever have before.  I am understanding a new kind of helplessness that I've never sensed before in its entirety.  Seeing more of its true scope is deafening and tuning at once.




///there is no replacement for spending time and sharing experience.   The world will never be ready for the damaged.  Us damaged don't have to fight world war prime alone, though.   You do not have to either.  You don't have to either.  Don't understand; do listen.

///El-P & Killer Mike - "Legend Has It"

What Half The Country Said

I can't stop bursting into tears every few hours.  Food won't stay in me when I do try to force myself to eat.  It's heart rending.  My body is physically rejecting reality like an immune system trying to defeat a bacterial infection.  Half of the country would prefer you don't exist.  Half of the country said that you are what's wrong with the country.  Half of the country said you are worthless.   Half of the country said do us a favor and keep it moving.  Sickening.  Half of the country said your life is good enough, you should be happy no one is tying you to a tree and that should be good enough for you.  Half of the country said we don't want to be bothered with you anymore.  Go away.

I wish I could fucking disappear.  Just evaporate into thin air.  Maybe you voted for him because he had that one campaign promise that you could really get behind.  Maybe you voted for him because Hillary is a woman and you just can't have a woman in an office with that much responsibility.  Maybe you voted for him because you flipped a coin and whatever it landed on was what you were going to vote.  Maybe you voted for him because you truly believe some of what he says or you thought he's a strong leader capable of leading America back to some made up glory from the past.  Whatever reason you found for yourself, whatever mental gymnastics you made yourself do: what you said with that vote was fucking get out of our lives because we are sick of you and this country is not for you, it is for us.  I want to kill myself.

You may continue to justify your vote with "well, I don't believe that and I don't think he really thinks that.  I love minorities.  I'm friends with them.  I love women, they should have the same rights as men and jobs..." oh of course.  "He only said that to get people riled up.  He tells it like it is, but he doesn't mean what he says..." you are so full of insane bile it is nauseating.  If you are willing to overlook everything he stands for to find the one thing you can hold on to and make yourself okay with casting a vote for him you are saying you are okay with everything else about him and can get behind everything he says.  You cannot pick and pull little bits here and there and throw blinders on toward the rest of the hatred and disgust.  That's like riding in a car with some people who are on their way to beat someone to death and shrugging because you're in the car to get a lift from your house to the store.  What the fuck should you care who gets beaten lifeless, it wasn't you holding a chain or bat, hell you didn't even get out of the car and turned the radio up when they stopped.

What you said with your vote was disappear.  I wish I could.  My body will stop convulsing soon.  I'll get back in to the movement of life.  Half of the people I see I will wonder what hatred is hiding underneath that smiley "good day, to you" mask.  What part of his hate speech is inside you word for word that you've managed to mask with "I like his healthcare ideas."  What part of his hate speech is inside you, but with a gentler paraphrase because you would never say it that way exactly.  I will wonder what fears lie behind half of their eyes.  I can't kill myself.  You'll always be there and disappearing won't change how you feel.  My pain will always be there and I'll have to learn to live with this latest greatest example.  I'm just tired of fighting and trying to fit in around the margins near the shadows.  What you said with your vote will never not be disgusting, will never not bring tears to my eyes.  You say get over it, we've come so far since slavery.  What half the country said with their vote with proud chests and big smiles begs to differ.

Move Town

I get so caught up with making the people around me things as a way of saying thanks and payment that I forget to make myself- to do what I want to do because I owe my existence, my here and now, to those people by a currency that will never translate because they don't know fully what they helped me reach escape velocity away from what I saw as an insurmountable margin and I don't view it as penance or clinging to the past or misplaced.  I see it as a continuous consciousness of how tenuous life can be and a ten four toward how the smallest gesture, the smallest show of what someone outside of a relationship might see as pity pence or enabling weakness can actually be a point and moment where you've helped someone's life turn a corner.  It's burdensome to think about and it takes a piece out of myself to do it, but everyone is thanked out of reflex and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, helpless and power filled at once, when I have taken the time to let them know the fact that I am still alive now is not by chance or the grace of a supreme being and is by their taking their time to pitch a penny or several thousand into my hat.  To fool yourself into thinking you've done it by yourself or by chance or by blessing or sheer hard work grind is something I want to make sure I never do.  So maybe it is an anchor.  Maybe it is an unnecessary sacrifice and can be framed as a guilt or a confirmation of sin and imperfection.  A penance.  I don't see it that way and will never come around to that frame of mind.  So much of life is decisions and whether it suits me or not a lot of those decisions happen outside of myself.  I accept that.  So please, accept my outside decision to thank you and the universe outside of myself that you have had a hand, direct and indirectly, in forming.

Once we're clear of that, we can shift focus back to fantasy lands and dreamscapes.  There isn't much more distance to cover and I am happy for that.  Excited for that.  There are times when I feel like every other word is about some future date when the resources are at their correct levels and processes have synchronized and the planets have lined up into something close to a grand cross and if I am twenty minutes in to 5th Element while listening to acid jazz with my heaphones in my key tray and I've already consulted my little sister and am suitably numb mouthed from too many cigarettes and just the right amount to dissuade me from running to the gas station to purchase more and the moon is a waning gibbous on a clear night with rain in the forecast for early before the sun comes up with the option to sit outside with a fire at any point prior barring the anything prior to the immediate because it did not rain the day through at work, where I box myself in to unrealistic expectations as a way to never have to actually execute anything.  If you never pull the trigger, you never have to learn whether or not there is more to learn about what you want to do.  Whatever you have conceptualized is its best and most perfect form.  You never have to translate.  I wanted to have children.  I can have children.  Meet my family!  It's almost like every idea is that part of you other people talk about and love, but if they ever did meet you, the rest of you, they'd screw their nose up and rub their squished shut eyes like they just saw an apple snap loose from a twig and fall up to disappear into the sky.

I get very caught up, but I have not forgotten my own needs.  It eats me out from the inside, but I never forget the gnaw and the sound of it and the feel of it, the blood cough taste of it, nose running, water eyed mechanics of it.  They scream at me.  I'm moving forward as fast as I can.  I swear, I am.  The days disappear swiftly.  The nights are restless, strapped to a mattress.  Fear lurks in corners.  Cats ask questions.  Notes are taken on walls and skin and misnamed folders.  Bite a lower lip and squeal from the top of the foothills of the mountain range, the clouds ahead of the temperature front doing strange things above the peaks and the ground bellowing thunder lake swells and strikes days distant, birds moving town in brunch sky above.  Sip.  Nod.  Please pass the olives.  Cross a leg and scribble onward.



///Sylvan Esso - "Uncatena"

Uncle Scar's Cross Dimensional Fortress

There are days of dread in trying to cross the bridge into dreamland.  Days when I've convinced myself everything will stay stable if I keep my eyes open.  Days when I'm afraid of putting on clothing, because once it's on, it cannot be turned off.

Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach.  From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep.  In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal.  Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside.  And then it all blows apart in the morning.  Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.

Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs.  They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything.  I do not want that.  I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned.  The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness.  Walk with the wind on your mind.

I think I'm done trying to be funny.  It never comes off right.  Days of dread.  Open your eyes.  No.  I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end.  There were twelve of them.  I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart.  And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action.  To die with rage instead of rage is a win.

At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness.  I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...".  Irregularities.  An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule.  I will follow you down.  Any deviation is unacceptable.

Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too.  We need to get back on mission.  An operation unto itself.  Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good.  It feels really damn good.  What are all of those jars of piss for?  If I knew, they would be used already!  And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.

Come play with us, Arthur.  That is not my name.  That is not my name.  That is not my name!  Stop calling me!  I do not know who that is!  We match, don't we?  Leave me the hell alone.  I need a whetstone.  Who doesn't?  I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here.  Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend.  I did not know him that well.  Am I wrong to be violently upset about it?  Years removed.

Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me.  The now me.  The today me.  Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them.  It's difficult to contemplate.  Processing and it comes back not a number.  What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge.  Do it for you.  I will get it working.  I have to.  Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall.  Get it right.  No will do, can do.  You're having a hard time, aren't you.  Nope, just downloading the patch.  The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.

No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings.  Especially pinky rings.  Boosters on.  It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me.  We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half.  I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet.  Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives.  And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.

I am still going to make music this year.  We cannot not do it.  It has been too long already.  "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve.  Walk with the wind on your mind.  Let go.  Open the gate.  Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.




///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up.  slingshot around the sun.

That Instant

you realize you may have to live longer than you originally planned on, back when you realized you weren't going to live forever.

Steady As She Goes

Remember what that used to mean?  I do.  It used to mean taking the highs and lows in stride, but not to so much the taking in stride as cutting straight though the thick of the wave and coming out the back side and surfing her straight into dusk.  Straight into the fall and the winter of the upcoming crest.  It used to mean a lot more than it did before it became a platitude.   Not that it's a platitude now.  I guess what I'm saying is that steady as she goes is a bad way to describe the circuit of this ship.

Right now, I would place it somewhere between an oxygen fire in the vacuum of space and a flat spin dizzying enough to make the sublime a Picasso'd afterthought.  It's terrifying in the same way a car accident is serene in the seconds before contact, except those seconds are stretching out days instead of seconds, weeks instead of days.

Steady as she goes, though.  All flame and wreck and how many souls can she bring down with her as she spirals into a sun?

It's the wanting that is tearing.  Shearing bolts and bulkheads and turning bodies like soil and plow spades, succumb to forces and forced things.  Do not kill.  Do not see.  Do not hear.   The touch of force like a kiss from a stranger who knows your one sided name.  And no why.  No why ever offered.   It's thrilling and numbing and begging.

Waiting for another break and it arrives unannounced and unheralded and reasons for people to question never come up, but choke up like a batter for an infield single and everyone sees it coming except the pitcher.  It's been tough.  Songs for getaway car single shot thirty minute production reels.  Everyone needs commas.  Everyone needs comas.

You want it both ways.  I want it both ways.  I want the privilege of mistake.  I want the forgiveness and the forgiving to see me in the light of a human being flawed by default and on the same hand I want the respect and the conversation granted to the sound.  I want what's coming to me and mine and I want to fight it at the same time.  I want answers.  Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I keep asking myself "why me?"  I keep saying that over and over and it would be so convenient to point to some kind of god or chance or a version of determinism with some kind of optical illusion at it's end.  The best I can point up is some kind of medicated psuedo goodness.  Some kind of hard parsed commonality or functionality.  Is that enough?

What ever is?  Am I going to kill myself is a matter of convenience and circumstance.  When I'm sure I'll be sure,  Is all I can say I won't be able to write some kind of flowery death note.  I hold my loved ones, and they do exist, no more hostage than anything or anyone else anyone or anything else can hold a thing or person dear.  It burns me that things can be that simple.  That simple and that hard.  I guess that's what becomes what burns me so hard.

That a person can want all of the rights, all of the allowances, of personhood and still be counted as damaged and warrant of special circumstance and consideration.  It boils down, a little bit, to I am just like you staring I am nothing like you dead in the face.  Because I want with all of my heart to be just like you.  And I know I'll never be.  Do you know how special you are?

Do you know how special you are now?

How about now?

Okay, well, how about now?


///War - "Me and Baby Brother"  everytime I hear this song I think of fifth grade and all the growing up I had to do and how I took my siblings for granted and how we stole from eachother constantly, but lately I think about all of our adventures and misadventures and I think if I ever have kids there will be a two head minimum because every dog may have its day, but what is a day without some belloved arse you'll be forever linked with to share it with.

///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"  ...for I am just like you...