danehalferty

[danehalferty]

Today.

Pushing forward felt like a conscious decision. I, Dane Halferty, will put one foot in front of the other, and at some point in time, when I turn around, where I was will no longer be where I am. Some days are tough, but pulling a blanket to one side and standing upright was never the most daunting task of my day. I generally try not to access my depression head-on while I’m in, what some people would refer to as, “the thick of it”. Usually, somewhere around the parameter, I can salvage a few scraps lying around on my way out and with my new perception that the sun has only gone away temporarily during a rotation of the rock to which I am binded, I can make a few jokes about the experience and abandon my weathered despondent shell for new skin. Lately, though, it’s evolving in a manner that I don’t even know if Jeff Goldblum could contain. It no longer annoyingly taps my shoulder, but instead now demands my full, undivided attention. It has taken residence under my eyelids and features horrible, violent scenes until my body submits and begins conjuring feelings of jealousy for the deceased and turns the opening of my eyes into an act of cowardice and shame, almost as if it’s in a morbid and sadistic staring contest with my frailty. It’s becoming unclear whether I am dreaming or wishing. The time where I should be sleeping is where my unraveling internal dread becomes my fear’s newfound entertainment, which is becoming alarmingly more dependable and uncomfortable.

I’m sitting shotgun with my depression’s favorite symptom, self-loathing, at the helm, ensuring that even when I do have the courage to make an attempt at an escape, it will be there to engage the throttle and continue the joyride. Self-loathing never turns off. It drives a reasonably priced hybrid and gets killer mileage. It’s incredibly efficient. It seems as though when I do finally find the strength to open up to someone how much I periodically despise myself, not outrightly for who I am, but as a symptom of something larger than myself, it is often met with cynicism and the implication that I’m using it as a guise to flourish in sympathy and protect myself from criticism. Which, obviously, drives me deeper into a hole where being open and honest is now just a set-up to be driven further down into that very hole when I really never needed anyone else’s help to get as far down as I have driven myself already up to that point. I really appreciate efficiency and it’s really best if I just grasp the splintered shovel handle myself and take it from here. 

Anger has been very prevalent as well, although unconventional and anterior. It typically feels like the burning core of my existence. Depression, anxiety and fear are more like very low-hanging dark clouds, to beat to death an old expression. Anger and aggression have found trade as protagonists for creativity in my case, which is usually great and makes music an outlet for which I can better learn to control and understand myself. It has also begun to shift from a guttural engine to the town drunk that appears unannounced to show me detailed pictures of anguish and childhood memories that I had subconsciously, but very intently, banished from allowing to exist within my brain for the sake of mental survival. The type of anger and feelings that I would never attempt to find solidarity in with my peers over fear of anyone knowing that I was feeling such a specific pain while everyone else was seemingly oblivious and distracted by the Power Rangers X-Men trading cards or finding nudie mags in the woods or having a childhood unadulterated by custody battles, addictions and feeling exponentially unwanted. The most specific image I can think of that has been haunting me lately is feeling neglected and angry on the bottom bunk of my bed in an empty house at roughly age 10 with my little hands in tight fists while crying as quietly as I possibly could and erratically punching the bottom of the mattress above me. The fear and uncertainty of not knowing who would decide to love me enough to take care of me fashioned an anger that I was eerily aware of as an emotion that I knew I was not yet equipped to handle. I am 30 now and feel equally as unequipped to handle it.

I would really love to continue dissecting my current real-time despair, but I have been staring at this screen for almost 4 hours now and I am exhausted.

In short and of relation to what prompted this post today: feeling like a burden on loved ones sucks. Attempting to explain that I don’t know how to deal with my depression and anxiety sucks. Laying thin and stiff and wide awake 3 ½ hours after my alarm has went off still in bed terrified to move sucks. I took off work today to deal with these overwhelming feelings and to take the time to write them out in specificity rather than continue to saturate my sheets and pillows and mattress with them. There is no resolve. There is no “here’s to looking up” payoff. So, for right now, I will leave it where I see most fit, which is with an idiomatic expression that makes me vibrate with hatred to the marrow of my fucking bones: it is what it is.

I’m going to get up and eat something now.

[danehalferty]

It’s Not UterME. It’s UterUS.

This is America. The most freeest country in the whole wide world. God himself blesses us, and only us. Sure, He wipes out a coast here and there, but it’s only to purify this great nation of blasphemous sensations such as Ru Paul or Miley Cyrus, and to remind everyone that it’s “Merry Christmas” and not “Adam and Steve”. This is the land of equal opportunity and the American Dream. A dream so palpable, that if you begin to obtain it, you can be shot in front of your hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. That’s the promise our forefathers made when they proclaimed that “all men are created equal”.

The current political climate has begun to terraform the planet in which I live and I’m becoming increasingly more aware of which lifeforms contain the capacity for compassion and which are merely crustaceans who’ve taken a seemingly human form but give themselves away by incessantly refusing to erect their posture and support themselves on their hind legs. As I’m sure you are aware, there is a woman running for President of the United States of America. The same America whose aforementioned forefathers declared that “all men are created equal” while owning slaves and also the same America that held out until 1920 to allow women the right to vote. Mind you, slavery was abolished, black men were holding political offices, and, basically, until Woodrow Wilson appeared in 1913, all “men” were created equal. This may seem like ancient history, and if it does, neat. But it isn’t and you’re wrong. Let’s do some time referencing and add sexy little wrinkles on your callused hard-working brain. Hillary Clinton entered law school in 1969, less than 50 years after it finally seemed important enough to amend the constitution to allow women to have a voice politically. It took 57 years between the Emancipation Proclamation and allowing women the right to vote. It took Jason Alexander’s current lifetime after abolishing slavery to decide that women could vote. This was not a courteous move on men’s part to introduce female influence into their political ideology. Women fought tirelessly for their right to be heard as American citizens, and moreover, as human beings living in the same society as the men who (still) rule their realities. She was born 27 years after women were deemed human enough to cast a ballot. If that seems like a very long time and you think that it is too distant history to consider as a plight to her accomplishments, remember that Seinfeld debuted on NBC 27 years ago. Now imagine that women weren’t allowed to vote pre-Seinfeld. It doesn’t seem like a very long time ago, does it? Joe Jonas is fucking 27 years old. It’s been 47 years since she entered law school and began blazing an uphill trail throughout her life. 48 years ago Donald Trump took a small hands loan from his father to begin his small hands business venture and he has proven that he can take a lot of money and make it look like a lot much more money while battling the incredible plight of being a white man with emasculatingly small hands. Like I said, the land of equal opportunity. 

However, this isn’t about Donald Trump’s tiny hands or his guise of small business ownership. This isn’t about his incredibly effeminate mannerisms while speaking into a microphone. This is not about his diversion to Bill Clinton’s past affairs with women to avoid answering his own, or how he apathetically brought them to a Presidential debate (for potential presidents), front and center, to put them on display pretending to be an advocate for sexually abused women. The same women who he publicly shamed in a tweet for being unattractive and not worthy of having such allegations taken seriously. Treating women poorly has been a patch that he’s displayed proudly upon his gaudy sash and wants everyone to know just how good at it he actually is. Okay, so it is a lot about that last part, but it’s really fucking important. It seems terribly important to understand that him bragging to Billy Bush about pussy-grabbing was less about him saying that women are drawn to his luxurious allure, and more that he can treat women however he pleases because he is a man of power, whether it is welcomed or not. That is more of a threat to this country than terrorism. I understand that it is very unpatriotic of me to say that ANYTHING is a bigger threat to this country than terrorism, but I’ll take it even further by saying that Patriotism and Nationalism are the Trojan horses that misogynists and racists have been jamming themselves into in order to save what little they can of the “good old days”, and given what short history this country has to offer, that is a terrifying thought. The people who are claiming that Americans need to arm themselves for protection are absolutely correct. We should arm the ones who are at the highest risk of harm in this country; minorities and women. We just had 8 years of a black man as the leader of the free world, and I know that many voters will be god damned if they see it handed off to a woman, no matter her opponent.

I feel fortunate to have had the ability to denounce God at an early age and instead recognize that what we embody the idea of god to be is what women are. Why wouldn’t men find cunning ways to shame women for their omnipotence? Not understanding women has made tens of thousands of dollars in the koozie industry and employed many a problematic stand-up comedian. We depend on women from the very instant that their bodies allow our existence. Our weak, vulnerable, drop-to-our-knees-if-lightly-tapped testicles exist solely because a woman allowed them to exist. I understand this and I will repent loudly until it is the gospel being sang from the top of every man’s lungs. The integrity of this country is at stake, and I refuse to be on the wrong side of history. One of these candidates has shown that she will work tirelessly to progress humanity and improve the lives of generations after ours. One of them blames everyone else when he’s losing, including the media, to whom he spent his entire life offering himself in spades as someone who he now has to pretend he isn’t. I’m sure TrumpTV will offer the best programming for single men after the women in their lives realize who they really are.

[danehalferty]

#womenfortrump #tcot #nojeansno #inseemjob #malecheerleader #deminofmasserection

[danehalferty]

Hey. Let’s do it.

[danehalferty]

Unsung.

I came to around 3 o’clock in the morning to what seemed to be a strangely coherent but also very disorienting conversation with 2 strangers who were bandaging my head with a cartoonishly large gauze wrap in the back of an ambulance.

“Do you know your address?”

“No. Somewhere along Truman.”

“You’re at 18th and Main right now. Someone who had witnessed you slide through this intersection on your scooter called 911. Do you know where 18th and Main is?”

“I have no idea where I am right now.”

Apparently, if you sustain a serious head injury and can’t recall your address or understand where you are, the EMT techs will follow-up with one last very important question: “Do you have anyone who can come pick you up from here?” My incredibly selfless and wonderful girlfriend got out of bed around 3:45 on Saturday morning to retrieve her helmet-less and now head-bandaged boyfriend from an intersection that she immediately recognized. The EMT assured her that I was fine and we went back to her place to get some rest before she had to wake up early for work.

As I stepped through my front door, a nauseating cloud immediately covered my hopes of rest and recovery for the day. Approximately once every 45 minutes to an hour I was panicking up the stairs to the restroom, often with a mouth full of vomit, where I would spend the next 15-20 minutes exhausting my body to expel everything in my stomach that did not exist. The pressure from throwing up this hard led to blood gushing from my nose for the remaining 15 or so times that this had occurred. Drenched in sweat and attempting to catch my breath, I would then retreat to my bed where I would curl up and shiver until the next wave of nausea came over me. Following some half-assed resistance, I gave in to Chelsea’s request to take me to the ER.

That was around 9 pm on Saturday night. It is currently 9:11 am on Monday morning and I have finally been removed from ICU to a normal room. My diet throughout this entire ordeal has been one (diagonally cut) half of a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, which remained in my stomach for nearly 2 hours, 2 Jell-Os and roughly 3-4 glasses of water. I’m surprisingly not feeling weak and really am not that hungry either. Then again, my belly may be pretty full on the nerves that have been growing anticipating my second CT scan tomorrow afternoon.

The first scan came Saturday night probably close to midnight. My neck was pretty sore. The EMT had released me from an ambulance the night before, even though my head was cut open, so I was sure that anything regarding a serious head injury would be considered over-worrying and was looking forward to the doctor telling me that my neck was only sore from the wreck and that everything was fine and it was time to go home. Here’s how that comforting news really came out from the doctor upon over-looking the CT images of my head and neck: “The good news is that your neck is fine. The bad news is that your head and brain are not.” I had an immediate flashback of being in the back of that ambulance. I clearly remember us laughing together and making jokes. One of the EMT personnel even took a picture of the back of my head with my own cell phone so I may see it. How was my head and brain not fine if they so willingly released me? I was already in the ambulance. It’s sole destination upon retrieving an injured person, especially one bleeding from the head and not remembering their own address, is 100% the hospital. Chelsea even confirmed my suspicion of this am-bromance by telling me that I side-hugged one of them upon my sketchy departure to embark on my adventure of throwing up and gushing blood. Do I have such an incredibly engaging personality that I can persuade Emergency Medical Technicians that it’s all good in the hood, even when bleeding from the back of my skull? Not cool, bro. Not cool.

“You have fractured your skull and have bruising and bleeding around your brain. We’ll be keeping you here to monitor you until it secedes and you can hold food down again.”

I will say that the staff at North Kansas City Hospital has been unbearably kind and have gone out of their way to accommodate my every need. I’ve been informed that the headaches that have been dictating my dreams, sleep, thought patterns and general mood will be around for weeks, if not more than a month. If the scan tomorrow tells me that this is all I need to endure for this to be over with and that the swelling, bruising and bleeding on my brain are going down, then I can definitely deal with that. I will update this tomorrow after the CT scan. In the meantime, please do me a favor if you are getting onto a motorcycle, scooter or anything with a motor and an open cab: 

Wear a fucking helmet.

[danehalferty]

The Badger Meeting

God dammit, I used to be so much funnier. Making my friends laugh was a destination and I was a new shiny vessel on her maiden voyage through silky smooth waters. It was safe. It didn’t feel like a sketchy transaction in the basement of an empty dark parking garage. It was honest currency and I never even had to check my account in fear of scarcity. There was no agenda and I wasn’t throwing myself into a void to avoid having to ever face the void I was originally trying to avoid. Nothing was funnier than my friends and I walking into random businesses in business suits we had purchased at a thrift store accompanied with a janky briefcase and insisting that we were scheduled to arrive for the Badger Meeting. Yes, we were there for the Badger Meeting. What’s the Badger Meeting? Well, you see, there are 23 bowls of cereal and 22 spoons and he without a spoon is the Badger. We were there for the Badger Meeting. Tom Green had just arrived on American TV and viral videos didn’t exist. We were wildly and unabashedly original and understood that we were the funniest people we knew.

I’m not sure how you quantify when or how a sense of humor is developed. Is it a skill? A defense mechanism? Are you born with it? Do your parents have to sit you down and show you every Mel Brooks or Leslie Nielson movie and every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Mr. Bean? I’m sure that watching Fawlty Towers and Absolutely Fabulous at 10 years old never endangered how efficiently I would later receive and compartmentalize the absurdity offered in spades daily by the landscape I currently navigate .

I am not naive enough to believe that a sense of humor is defined solely on the notion of enjoying seeing another in a bad situation or the ability to laugh. I believe that it is much more in your ability to detach yourself from a false sense of cosmic importance and accept that you’re apart of the absurdness and find comfort in that existential echo just as much as your ability to sit through the newest Adam Sandler movie.

For me, this is where having what is perceived to be a good sense of humor becomes a bit more complicated. At which point are you having a good sense of humor and where do you recognize that you are sacrificing yourself for the sake of convenience? Having a sense of humor is incredibly personal. Any joke can trigger endless emotions and you have an impossible amount of time to react to all of them at once. They can instantly turn someone into your greatest ally or your worst enemy, depending on their own unique relationship with their own sense of humor. This is very evident given the walking-the-plank feeling that accompanies the bravery of attempting your first joke around a stranger without the aid or support of your peers. A keen sense of humor can be your guardian and defense shield and the lack thereof can morph your once hard leathery skin into a soft sponge that swells and proves the continuation of movement to become increasingly difficult or even impossible. I have an impeccable sense of humor that renders me invulnerable and can elevate me to a level of invincibility with that of the legend of gods. But, just as most gods are created for comfort and meaning, it is merely a belief that I hold to be self-evident and could very well be fashioning a perception of weakness and uncertainty. I am certain, however, that I am pretty funny.

Jokes are magic tricks without the shitty jacket and poor showmanship. Sleight-of-hand is an imperative skill and a necessary tool for survival. I can blatantly point out my most obvious shortcomings while simultaneously displaying those shortcomings, but if I can get a laugh out of you while it’s happening, then I’ll never truly have to answer for said shortcomings. It’s really pretty fucking selfish on your part, if you get to thinkin’ about it. I’ll exchange a raw piece of myself for your enjoyment and we’ll mutually pretend as if everything is fine. Which, really, as I’m writing this, I’m discovering how selfish of a prick it makes me to call someone selfish for enjoying my misery if I’m exposing it while also crashing into things on my metaphorical unicycle. Which, really, is for me to deal with and is unfair for me to seek retribution. This is where these transactions begin to feel like that dark parking garage basement I mentioned earlier. I’m fearing the impending scarcity of the very currently that once allowed me such privilege to spend so freely. The vessel now moves hesitantly and flinches with each gust of wind. It floats with an unreliable rhythm and rarely uses a map anymore because it’s worn a cynical groove over time with the regularity it’s traveled the ill advised paths it’s grown so weary of traveling. Shit. I’m the badger, aren’t I?

I’ll return my props to my comically over-sized bag in which they are kept and seek refuge on shore to begin crafting a new perceptual vehicle. One that is large enough to house everyone and everything that I’ve come to know and love. One that can safely and efficiently reach the border of Canada. 

Donald Trump may very realistically become the next President of this country, after all.

[danehalferty]

Equaltitties!

I get it, women are a lot to handle. They often make words and sometimes cry. They demand equality (even though you can’t hit them if they hit you first) and want to control their own bodies. Women’s bodies? Gross. I mean, don’t get me crossed for a funny feller. I LOVE women. I just want to control whatever it is that they think is best for themselves. Technically, I’m helping by doing this.

So, fellow men, what do you do when a gal utters that annoying word that makes our tough, hardworking, rugged and not-at-all disappointing members shrivel into the I-swear-that-never-happens size? You know the word. It makes you damn the day that Hillary did a thing or when Carrie did or didn’t find love because I’m not sure which one was Carrie because of my being a fucking man. That one god damned disgusting word.

Feminism.

Well, boys, you’re in luck. I can help you work around the burden of having to feel like you’re on trial when an ice queen asks your opinion on feminism.

1. Don’t have an opinion.

When women demand rights that are equal to that of men and you feel like justifying men’s rights to explain why theirs are less important, don’t. You are garbage and belong in Andre the Giant’s gym bag, you piece of shit.

That’s it.

[danehalferty]

Requiem for a Meme.

Please excuse any misuse of my vocabulary or misspellings. I can only convey my point as well as I can articulate it. My goal is to create an impenetrable vibrant city built with carefully constructed sentences and an efficient public transit system. But, I know, in reality, I am just hesitantly shoving these words into a refuge camp where they seek shelter under ratty tarps and fight to keep warm by huddling close together and burning poor grammar in barrels, hoping they go unnoticed and aren’t bombed or raided in the middle of the night. It is 2:27 in the morning, Central Standard Time, and I am currently writing this on my cellular phone at a dimness of 15% and with my comforter pulled over my head. Why is my comforter over my head? I’ll tell you why; because I’m 29 years old and still have a very juvenile fear to expose my thoughts, feelings, or vulnerabilities. Even though, ironically enough, this will be cast into the same vast toxic galaxy where my peers shamelessly post racist, sexist, mindlessly telling things about themselves on a daily basis without ever worrying whether or not they are being impeccable with their word or challenging their self-awareness or how it reflects their perceptions of other human beings. Human beings who are in-arguably made of the same composition, regardless of where they happen to exist, and who impossibly exist at the same exact time as you and I. With that idea in mind, I’d very much enjoy if we locked hands and entered the void that we are so familiar and unfamiliar with together. I won’t judge you and you will hopefully not judge me either. I am not going to post my fucking Google history here, but I do promise to be as honest and heartfelt as humanly possible, no matter how embarrassing or costly it is to my narscisstic brain that foolishly begs for validation or positive reinforcement from everyone I encounter at all times. I want to connect with people in a manner that they aren’t typically accustomed to connecting. In a manner that doesn’t involve posting a meme and then measuring the success or value of your interaction with people based on shares or likes. I want to share original thought. We are all an experiment traveling through nothingness on a rock at nearly 67,000 miles per hour. Let’s take some chances and discover what this experiment means to us. Cheers.

[danehalferty]

Thyroid Rage.

On February 5th, in the year of 2008, I had a surgical operation known as a Total Thyroidectomy due to a condition known as Papillary Thyroid Cancer. It was fine. My friends were unbelievably supportive and my family was unnervingly more terrified than I was. It was fine. I had a large painless lump in my throat that my friend discovered while we were drinking. It was fine. I reluctantly saw a doctor about it after a friend’s wife, then girlfriend, called me from his phone to tell me that I was being an asshole if I didn’t see a doctor about it (Thank you, Kaley). It wasn’t fine.

I mean, it was fine. I knew it was fine because the surgeon wore the classic cartoonish pizza slicer on his forehead as he leaned in to make sure he locked eyes with this 21 year old asshole before him who wasn’t smart enough to see a doctor after discovering a lump in his neck that restricted his breathing at night to ensure that he understood these sentences, “There’s a very good chance this is cancer. We will do the biopsy during surgery, which will be in two weeks.”

Fine.

I never made time to be scared. Dr. Christensen spoke to me like a man who was going to cut that shit out of my throat, season it, cook it at the perfect temperature and then serve it to me with only the freshest of the tiny paper milk cartons next to it the following morning. I didn’t have time to be scared. There were parties to attend. A brand new shining Power and Light District to begin hating. I was no longer just a boy; I was a boy who could go out drinking legally. I had shit to do.

Following the surgery I decided to watch some support forums I had found on what I can only assume was then on AOL or Ask Jeeves. You see, in those days you had to choose a search engine and they were all vastly different. It was like asking a stranger a question quickly on the street in passing as opposed to asking your new-ish reliable neighbor who somehow can fashionably pull off khakis with anything, Mr. Googleman. I remember feeling angry and bad for these people because of how horribly they had mishandled their situation. It was the largest pity party I had ever not asked to be apart of. We had Thyroid Cancer. A talented doctor removed our Thyroid Cancer. We now take a pill. Walk to the podium to accept your award if you’d like, but you god damned well better get off the stage before the band has to play you off. People go through the hell of chemotherapy and still die because of cancer. Families fall apart and lives change forever because of cancer. I get to take a fucking pill and feel a little “off” because of cancer? Thank you for the sympathy, but I’ll remain seated.

I still feel like a hack if I ever complain about this condition. If I ever do bring it up, it’s to make fun of myself for having had cancer before someone has the chance to push sympathy on me for having had cancer. Or an attempt to explain why I don’t feel like going out now that hangovers have since become a living hell, which was the perfect time after recently turning 21. Which, of course, has always ended with me going out anyway and in my head turns to me prancing down the aisle to then collect my award for going out drinking anyway because THAT’S how you beat cancer, you fucking pussies. The very first thing my doctor told me was to absolutely avoid iodine in my diet. Two nights following surgery, I went out for sushi. The morning after my surgery, I had the nurse stroll me out for a fucking cigarette. My life changing hadn’t changed my life one beat and I wanted – nay, I needed that to be obvious. I was in total control.

I believe I fell in love with The Farrelly Brothers and their brand of comedy in the 90s because I was unaware that they were teaching me how to deal with my own life. Their characters were always unintentionally in control because they were so oblivious to the idea that everything around them was chaos. It was all very normal to me: You move from a farm to the city, your parents divorce, you change homes every couple of years, you play Nintendo 64, see your parents cry from time-to-time, you learn an instrument, attempt to run away to a neighbor girl’s house who lends you her father’s porn mags and Merit cigarettes until he’s about to come home (4th grade), argue about who the white Power Ranger will be in class, briefly meet a step-father from time-to-time, play a little 4 Square here and there, only experience what a family dinner is like at your friends houses, ride your bicycle everywhere and attend nearly every school in the metropolitan area. You know, like the other kids. I was always happy just to be somewhere. Therefore, I was in control.

This naive idea about control also blessed me with zero ability to grasp the idea of foresight or self-awareness and probably saved me from becoming something I would have felt forced to become out of fearing time and how others measure success in this time. My future? Who am I, fucking Johnny Carson? Look down. Are your feet moving? Oh, they are? Then you’re moving forward. Stop worrying about the future.

After about five years of seeing an Oncologist every six months I began to wonder if the daily hangover feeling, whether I had drank the previous night or not, was really normal for anyone without a thyroid or if I was just being a pussy about not having a thyroid. According to many friends, I was just being a pussy. According to my doctor, everything looks great and the headaches and newly found anxiety were going away eventually, so I was basically being a pussy. I’m no graphateer and would never claim to be a graphateer. In fact, I couldn���t even make you a graph to prove that I’m 90% positive that I just made up the word graphateer. But, somewhere out there must exist such a graphateer that could make a graph to show exactly where these ever-growing side effects, compounded with my cancer doctor’s word that it’s going away soon, meet at an exact point to suddenly create the speculation and self-awareness that the lack thereof helped me make it this far into my now weird and unfamiliar life. I continued the medicine, but still have yet to return to check my lab work ever since. I have felt just as shitty every single day. And, to me, that means it’s fine.

One year ago I really began reading less about the effects of losing my thyroid and switched my focus to the effects of not taking the synthetic thyroid medicine. The anxiety and depression were out of control. My brain couldn’t produce anymore acceptance speeches for allowing myself to have the privilege to destroy myself any longer. I had once stopped taking it for three weeks and I remembered that at one point in my life, I was able to return a pair of jeans without having a panic attack in line or chewing the inside of my mouth raw. I had a few moments to take a few deep breaths to remember that having dreams where I die shouldn’t be the ones I try to sleep in to so I can hold on to the feeling of not existing for 9 more minutes before returning to my dungeon. I felt like myself again. But, alas, in his fucking impossibly well-matched khakis and pull-over sweater, Mr. Googleman reminded me that this was a dangerous experiment and that it was time to start sleeping in again. So I began taking my dose of 200mcg of Levothyroxine everyday again.

In early December of 2015 I shifted my focus once more. Away from medical websites. I wanted to find personal accounts of real people, not doctors that prescribe the only medication they are trained to monitor, but people who have taken themselves off Levothyroxine and how their bodies and minds reacted. Support websites haven’t changed. It’s ALL CAPS OF WARNINGS THAT YOUR ORGANS WILL SHUT DOWN AND YOU WILL DIE!!!! This is how you warn your friend not to play “Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board” when you are six years old. This is how your racist uncles and aunts forward you emails warning you that Barack HUSSIEN1!!! Obama is an anti-Christ Muslim alien soccer ball or whatever. I still haven’t found a single scientifically coherent account of how my life is in real danger by stopping the medicine, really committing to some life changes and learning to supplement what my body lacks in a more natural approach.

It’s been six weeks. I wake up on time and in a better mood. I talk to people with interest again. I still have times where existing seems silly, but that’s more of a side effect of the self-awareness thing I picked up along the way with a better sense of humor to shelter it. I could also be a selfish asshole and be gleefully deterorating while simultaneously fleeing the anxiety of it all out of habit of navigating chaotic waters. I’ll probably end up back on it. I don’t know. I am, however, 100% certain about one thing, which is that no matter what happens, it’s fine.

Shit.

The band is playing me off right now, aren’t they?

[danehalferty]

Rosie O'Diner and the Menstrual Frycle

[Scene opens with Joey and Daniel at a booth in a diner. Joey dips a french fry into a red substance and slowly moves his hand towards his mouth]

Daniel: JOEY, NO!

[Daniel slaps fry out of Joey’s hand]

Joey: Hey! What’s the big idea, pal? You just ruined my delicious french fry.

Daniel: That was no ordinary french fry, my man. I swear that I saw a glob of Rosie O'Donnell’s menstrual remnants dripping from the tip of that very fry.

Joey: You’re trippin’, Holmes. That’s just ketchup.

Daniel: Oh.. oh my god. You don’t know, do you?

Joey: Know what? That ketchup is the most delicious condiment in the world and I eat several gallons of it every single day? Of course I know that. Everybody knows that. In fact, it seems that you’re the only person I know that DOESN’T know that.

Daniel: Joey, please read, out-loud, the ingredients marked on the label of that bottle of ketchup that you love and consume gallons of per day.

[Joey begins without even glancing at the ketchup bottle]

Joey: Tomatoes, salt, vin..

Daniel: ..Joey. Please. Read the god damned label.

[Joey slowly reaches for the ketchup bottle and begins turning it to face the label towards his eyes]

Joey: Tomato Concentrate Made From Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Potassium Chloride, Spice, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Natural Flavoring..

[Joey’s eyes narrow to confirm that he is seeing the same sentence on the label that his brain has already begun to register. Joey hesitantly continues]

Joey: ..may contain traces of Rosie O'Donnell’s menstruation (as preservative).

[Joey’s eyes widen in disbelief as his body sinks into his booth. FADE TO BLACK]

That was a scene from my nonexistent screenplay that I just made up to over-exaggerate my hatred for ketchup, entitled “Rosie O'Diner and the Menstrual Frycle”

I love tomatoes, salt and vinegar. Especially vinegar. I mean, I really love vinegar. I can take 5 shots of vinegar back to back to back to back to back without even flinching. I’m the Keith Moon of vinegar, mother fucker. I will surely be found blue, bloated and floating in a vat of vinegar, al a Beerfest. But, I digress. This isn’t about my inevitable fate, even if it will be tart and delicious. This is about my hatred for ketchup. This is about the plight of a white male in The United States of America and having to explain that I do like all of the ingredients in a bottle of ketchup individually, but I absolutely detest them when combined with chemicals to make a pasty condiment.

Ketchup is ambiguous, shifty, and irresponsible. I’ve seen a human person dishonor a finely cooked steak by dipping it into this substance that tastes like a dollop of melted pennies. Instances such as these pose the question “for what exactly is ketchup intended?” If your answer is “anything and everything”, then fuck you, you fucking monster. In my highly-respected opinion, It’s for children, french fries (when eaten by children) and corn dogs (which are only for children who cannot prepare their own food).

Laws should be put into legislation suggesting a longer waiting period for ketchup packets. Did you know that you can walk out of any fast food restaurant with as many ketchup packets as you’d like? I’m not even shitting you. How are we still accepting this faux-alchemy presented by shit-wizards (shizards) in this year of our Lord, two-thousand-and-fourteen? It’s disgusting.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about this travesty, except to pray every single night, distract myself with copious amounts of kitten memes, and waste half of my work day writing about it on this barren website.

Now, please, pass me the ranch dressing.

[danehalferty]

Better Off Undead

The scariest thing I can possibly imagine is sitting down with a health care professional to reveal my honest thoughts, fears, and anxieties, only to watch him or her scribble down notes in order to come to a conclusion on wether or not I am mentally healthy. Isn’t that fear in and of itself confirming my fear of fearing someone determining if I’m healthy just proof that my mental state is unhealthy? Shit. I may have jumped the proverbial shark with that one. Please, allow me to back this rusty vessel to the launch pad for another attempt at explaining why I’m afraid of having a conversation with a doctor concerning depression.

I’ve never had what I would consider a “suicidal thought”. I imagine that a person who flirts with suicide often romanticizes the physical steps required to end ones life, wether it be knotting a noose, loading a gun, climbing on a windy ledge or what-have-you. A bad day or break-up has never left me with my head in my hands thinking that that very moment was the end or all I could endure. This all probably sounds like the world’s worst humble-brag. “Who, me? No. I don’t have suicidal thoughts, bro. I’m existentially challenged and only dream of no longer existing. Big difference.” What an asshole. But these thoughts can’t be connected to the same pipeline. Surely, I can persuade myself that I am just really good at fully immersing myself in deep thought and philosophy. Surely.

One reason that I find this so important and have had insane amounts of anxiety about putting these thoughts into the ether is because I don’t know where my brain stands on the bridge that connects these two naively separated states-of-mind. At the end of the day (ah, the Nickelback of idioms), I don’t feel (emphasis on feel) that I’m wired to accept that I can obtain happiness or accept the idea that happiness can be exclusive to just waking up and being able to feel sadness or joy or anything that living permits us to experience. This is my perception of my reality, but I know and don’t know at the very same time how many other people feel this same exact way on a day-to-day basis. It can be a single thought to be shaken off immediately or it can be a cold, dark rabbit hole that germinates into a several-day expedition of carefully tip-toeing around a frail psyche that demands understanding for it’s existence but is also often content with a bag of chips or watching sports.

However, there is always a sobering conclusion to these expeditions; the ever-sought-after light narrowly peering through the pin-sized hole that, up until this very moment, seemed unattainable. I believe these bouts of depression (for lack of a better term) are so intense for the same reason that life is exponentially brimming with love, affection, passion, and, the ability to feel mother fucking empathy. That is such a strong emotion that you cannot deny and connects humans on a level that makes time irrelevant because very little matters more than the moment of feeling with another human being. I know it really isn’t all so bad.

Wether it’s depression or an obsession with something that I don’t understand, and after years of fighting the fear of attempting to explain these feelings to a professional, I am slowly accepting that I have to sit my ass down, grip the handle bars, and send myself towards that launch pad.

If anyone happens to stumble upon this first real entry into a Tumblr account that I’ve had open for about 4 years, I hope there’s something tangible to take away or a feeling that is relatable. Talking about yourself is awkward and feels very unsafe, but I believe it’s undeniably important that sharing an honest account of your feelings prevents other human beings from feeling alienated or ostracized for being human beings. Life is beautiful. Please share it.