jamesrbailey

[jamesrbailey]

ssri’s, cold turkey

guilt guilt guilt shame shame shame all of the things you aren't doing are making everyone else insane but i can’t get out of bed

dependent, disloyal, destructive depression i'll grab ahold as i take you down with me i'll kill us both i'll kill us all

too much at once and never enough i dont have the strength to accept the things i cannot change but i have the energy enough to guilt myself into oblivion when things aren't going as they should

and i feel everyone else aching to get at me to throw new burdens onto my back to surround me with questions and phone calls and emails that never stop even though they go unanswered the wolves are always at the door the ground is ripe with bottom feeders the urchins of the dead earth all with a taste for my blood

dismissive, disinterested disenchanted with all of life fill the prescription amber colored bottles so many pills but only one a day and the urge always the urge so many pills to end it all with one little 'oops' and the funeral is booked

sell all my shit sell my kidneys you can have it all if i can just have some peace and calm

[jamesrbailey]

the furnace is always lit

my chest cavity burns but its a burn that is common it’s always there just in various states of on fire from roaring flame to glowing embers but never, ever put out

i feel the stoke of the flames when someone says something stupid to me when someone asks me dumb questions when weak, needy, pathetic humans need their hands held for the simplest of actions

i feel violent flashes of images in my head of swinging a hammer into the head and bodies of everyone around me just to clear out a little space and get rid of this overcrowding viral infection of human kind

at this point it’s either me or them they go or i go and i am fine with either option i can’t suffer these fools any longer i can’t sit by while these pathetic morons can’t even wipe their own ass while the shit rolls down their leg and they wet their pants not because they can’t but because they don’t want to they want it to be someone else’s problem never their own i am tired of being a do-er in a world full of talkers

i spend my days fantasizing about finding a place far away from them a secret place where they couldn’t find me even if they tried a place hidden away under lock and key where the vagrant dead humans are not allowed no mouth breathers no stupid questions no webbing to catch me in the tangle of their lives no more people

[jamesrbailey]

roots undo

2009 was almost over my things were gathered by the door i didn’t know where i was going but this wasn’t my home anymore and through her tears she said to call her she asked to not be cut out of my life back of my head i knew i wouldn’t i’d never hear her voice again

the pains too deep it’s not so easy to let go and again I’m all alone just like i always was

stumbled around looking for footing or a simple roof over my head my stomach hurts too much for eating least when I’m sleeping i’m not feeling dead try not think about what happened trying to let it all float away she wasn’t there when i needed her but i was there when she was dead weight

no credit earned a lesson learned not to trust and again I’m all alone just like i always was

its all a blur ten years of black outs a well of anger overflowing too much to bear for everybody my friends all knew to stay far away I’m taking pills but they aren’t helping and if i stopped i’d probably kill myself i feel betrayed i know she failed me look what they make us do to ourselves

dreams are cruel I’m a fool to take her word and again I’m all alone just like i always was

now here i am it’s 10 years later my skin to thick to penetrate i’ll never let anyone closer i don’t believe them when they relate so i pretend i read the script i memorized every line the normal thing for me to say to lower there concern for me

no one looks when you don’t raise all their alarms and they don’t know I’m alone just like i always was fooled them all kept them all behind the door and i’ll always be alone i don’t want them anymore

[jamesrbailey]

snake eating its tail

its always the same everyday stuck in a loop and coming back around the way we came theres something in the blood theres dirt in the water my wrists just itch and itch on the verge of slit

i look in the mirror and notice how perfect a gun barrel fits right into my temple but we aren’t supposed to think about those things we aren’t suppose to talk about those things everyone around me in hard denial and defending their illusions cause thats all that life is there is nothing compelling or meaningful without the ridiculous emotion we attach to it

i feel like I’m drowning but it’s taking too long to die i’ve accepted it breathed in the water and I’m still here aching and hurting lungs full of water choking sounds no light, no tunnel

they always told me that a life was waiting for me all that beautiful promise and none of it ever manifested i went after it, harder than most but it was smoke and mirrors and snake oil anything that ever had any content used up and burned out by a generation before me

[jamesrbailey]

[jamesrbailey]

Love yourself before you can love me? Translation:”I am a weak person, and I cannot handle you because of this.”

I’ve been through a lot of therapy, i've devoured psychology and psychotherapy books, existentialism books, the russian authors who suffered at the hands of communism, books and stories from nazi occupied wherever. The one thing i am sure of is that the idea of love.........is horseshit. Romantic love is on par with a mental disorder, and chemically no different than eating chocolate. Love is not enough. Love is actually the bottom dregs of the cup that were all trying to fill. Its the things we all talk about and strive for to keep us going, but the reality is, it's fleeting. Love is a chocolate candy and gone just as fast.

Do I love people? Yea.

Is that important enough to me to sustain me? No.

Never has and never will. I'm not proud of that fact, but it is a fact. It just doesn't mean enough. We all want it to mean "EVERYTHING", but it barely means anything which is why our divorce rates are higher than they have ever been, people are in and out of relationships like crazy, and everyone is lonely because we have listened to the bullshit touted at us about love since childhood. When the "new toy" feeling goes away after a few months of the relationship, and that feeling that it's supposed to fix everything in your life, isn't there and it DOESN'T fix everything in your life, people panic and move on cause the think "it just wasn't the one." its insanity! It's actually simpler than that. We lean on each other to help each other weather the storm of life, cause it is a fucking storm and it sucks and its nice to have someone else there to, at least, sit in your misery with, but thats all it is. it's a co-dependency wired into our DNA, and it's VERY VERY faulty.

Love yourself? Sure. You're all you really have.

Love yourself before you can love someone else? That's a hallmark card! its nonsense and it doesn't mean anything.

Maybe it's just me, but everyone is full of shit and I refuse to lie to myself about anything.

Loving yourself in not quantifiable. it's like "ok. I'll love myself.....Where do I start? How do you do that?" ask that question and no one will give you a straight answer because it's NONSENSE.

What they are really saying is "You have edges, and scars, and chinks in your armor, and i am too much of a coward to stand my ground and accept you, and love you as you are. i don't think i can handle your eccentricities and quirks because i want something easy and simple. i don't want to have to work at a relationship. i am a pampered fucking sheep who has had everything be SO easy in life, and now that i've met someone real, I CAN'T HANDLE IT!"

Thats what "love yourself before you can love anyone" means. It means they are too weak to be with someone that isn't the TV idea of a boyfriend/girlfriend/partner. its narcissism, and it's pathetic.

Of course everyone loves themselves! Want proof? Go load a gun and hold it to your temple and watch how bad your hand shakes. I've done it! Thats terror you have never felt before in your life. Only then do you realize just how much you actually do love yourself. Its written into everyone to survive and love themselves. So loving yourself is completely irrelevant to the topic.

[jamesrbailey]

Pettiness

no more handouts no more smelling the fucking flowers nights alone in your shit apartment with the crumbs you didn’t vacuum and the tied up bags full of food packaging

eat shit like the rest of them

stir the pot with an even bigger ladle uncharted territory can be bleak feel how intensely it changes you on the inside the shifting of your molecules the construct recoils like a snake i was born with weapon and tool built in software for the fight against failures when they level all the games whats the point in playing anymore if everyone can win

there can be no winner with such sore losers around theres nothing more volatile than a sure bet gone wrong tear it up, roots and all throw it into chaos like scorned little children mistakes were made, but mistakes continue and you’re too busy making excuses to stop them a lingering sea of worthlessness so convinced of its self righteousness

you don’t like it down here? didn’t know that it would be like this? this is what you were fighting for so have at it take the reigns prove yourself why is it always so quiet after this part?

[jamesrbailey]

life on repeat im in too deep see all my failures laid out and i can’t sleep don’t even breathe it’s not up to me this path was planned before anyone asked me hold your own so it goes this is the way it’s done nobody knows.... don’t try and change our simple ways why would you make such a fuss over everything it must be you it’s all your fault all our guilt and blame on you it falls so shame on me you don’t like what you see reminders of a life you’ll never lead can no longer play so you change the game right under everyones feet and walked away how far to go before it blows and you couldn’t take the pressure on your own this is your life poked full of holes no one to take the credit nobody knows it must be you it has to be we cannot deal at all with our mistakes

[jamesrbailey]

on the origin of suffering

in my head, the war is over we’re just living among the rubble the burned out shops and piles of bricks that used to be cathedrals it’s a dystopian wasteland full of smoke and ash hanging framework, twisted out of shape and sticking out in awkward angles it feels bleak and empty once filled with feelings of what we had and is never going to be again my outlook is always too negative my instinct is overprotective shapes and angles, nothing with any form or content just dust and shadows apathy and nihilism existenstially yours, on repeat and it goes on...

[jamesrbailey]

two hundred and forty pounds of "fuck you" coming at you like a wolf in the wilderness my pronouns are "eat shit" and "you're a narcissist" this fist is gluten free and carbohydrate poisoned for your fat american ass to snack on while TMZ tells you the latest ugly underbelly of culture

everything smells like shit if you get close enough

the next expansion pack for your computer game is called "hunt the fat man-child" it's electronically and digitially signed to brow beat you till you piss your pants you worthless, good for nothing failure of an individual check out of life cause theres no life just happening for you working for it is too much to ask your mother had a rotten womb by the looks of you shit goes in, shit comes out"

[jamesrbailey]

im glad you like my stuff, but.......jesus. these are one after the other if you look at the time captures.  um.........thanks................please don’t find me and murder me?

[jamesrbailey]

no fun intended

i truly am my fathers son i really am the selfish one I’m always tired and cranky, and in pain i think this time I’m actually going insane

i truly am everything that they say what i appear to be from a look from far away everyones right and it’s all my fault weight on my back blown discs and all

i know i am an overreaction i really am one big distraction all I’ve ever been is a spoiled, pouting boy it matters not how i feel inside

i am not valid and neither is my pain i am not valid and neither is my pain the blood is shooting in a mist right from my veins but I’m not valid and neither is my pain

i truly am a miserable wreck i know i am what did you expect the choice was made before i could even speak i know I’m sick i know I’m weak

i’ve gone over it a thousand times before the same conclusion as you and yours it changes nothing no stones unturned i’ll hold it in this time a lesson learned

i am not valid and neither is my pain i am not valid and neither is my pain the bones are showing through the skin and the stains i am not valid and neither is my pain

i truly am my mothers boy i now know why i yearn to destroy all this anger all this rage is boiling over is getting away

i truly am my families pariah one stupid comment and my blood is one fire i truly am what you’ve made me to be you all created your mortal enemy

i am not valid my pain is not real i guess I’m just making it up so tell me now how am i supposed to feel

i know i know i fucking know i know

[jamesrbailey]

A startling realization that i have been trying to build a life, and working towards goals that will never be attainable for people like me. This world is built for them, not us. There is no room for us. There is no place for us. We try to occupy the spaces but the act of contortion leave us sore and aching and the constant reminder that there will never be a place in this world for us because we were not born normal, like everyone else. we cannot compete in the game of life, and it’s too late to change the game now.  Names have been redacted to protect the guilty.  Sadness will prevail... ---------------------------------------------------- REDACTED is back living in Syracuse and not with his wife.

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58  ME

I think they're heading for divorce.

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58  HER

Oh shit that’s too bad

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59  ME

I feel so goddamn bad for him. I caught him heading out of work and I couldn't stop crying

He had to console me

It just brought up memories of EX’S NAME REDACTED

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59  HER

Oh man. He’s been your friend forever

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59  HER

Oh fuck!!!!!!!

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59  ME

We kinda had a falling out over his wife.

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59  ME

He gets a little too overprotective.

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59  HER

Oh yikes. All men do though

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59  ME

I guess I hadn't seen NAME REDACTED in 5 years.

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00  ME

I didn't know it was that long.

I'm starting to realize that I'm coming out of 6 years of black outs.

What seems to me like it's only been a few months to a year has been YEARS

The truth is, I play it off well cause I don't want to worry people, but I'm sick.

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01  HER

Oh that’s so you

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01  ME

There are times when I am not of sound mind

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02  HER

We all have those moments.

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03  ME

Yea but I have ptsd

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03  HER

Very true

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03  ME

And sometimes what I think has only been a few weeks has been a year

I've never really told anyone

Cause I hate scaring people

But I'm missing months worth of memories

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04  HER

Maybe it’s better that way

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04  ME

I have NAME REDACTED and NAME REDACTED on notice

If they haven't heard from me in a while to check on me

They have to tell me if I am spinning out cause I don't know anymore.

And NAME REDACTED had been trying to get ahold of me for close to 5 years and I didn't really have a clue.

And he's a brother to me

So he needed me and I wasn't there

So that feels really shitty

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05  HER

Oh man well you are now and that’s what matters. The now

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10  ME

Yea I know

It like, why the fuck does the world always get shattered to pieces on us.

When complete scumbags get everything and have beautiful lives

And we're the outcast who can't have anything normal.

NAME REDACTED and I are cut from the same cloth

It's like, house, wife, kids and a dog? Happiness. Nope not for you weirdos. It's gonna be loneliness and cold food for the rest of your life.

Every time we fucking try to have something simple. The same simple things that everyone wants it just turns to ashes in our fucking hands.

It scares the shit out of me.

Is this the future for CURRENT GIRLFRIEND NAME REDACTED and I?

Cause everything was great for NAME REDACTED until they got married.

Cause these guys have always been better at this life shit than me and even they can't seem to make it work. What the fuck hope do I have?

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16  HER

Everyone has their own paths. You do the best you can. Nothing is ever easy unfortunately

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16  ME

It just seems like such a trap waiting to happen

I can't go through that

NAME REDACTED went down to North Carolina and he worked 5 jobs

But he's a New Yorker

So he didn't make any friends.

His wife was his only contact

And she felt smothered

And NAME REDACTED spun out and she couldn't handle it.

But the jury's in. The evidence is clear. Peer review has been done. It's all one big pile of bullshit.

And now NAME REDACTED is back in Syracuse

Right back where he started in this horrible city full of horrible people who just want you to hurt like they do

35 years old and not any further from where we fucking started as kids.

And this goddamn place has a way of pulling you back in like the village of the damned.

there's gotta be more than this

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22  HER

Well I’m stumped.

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22  ME

Me too

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23  ME

That's the problem.

I'm just frustrated.

If it was one of us it would just seem like bad luck. But it seems like it happens like dominoes, one after the other, to all of us.

Three of my friends have gotten divorced in the past few years. Out of nowhere.

I can't do this shit.

I'm not wired to handle this kind of shit.

I never told any one this, but EX, NAME REDACTED asked me out a bunch of times and I told her no, before we dated.

Cause I told her I could not handle something going wrong and us breaking up.

I kept saying no

And finally she wore me down.

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33  HER

Oh I thought she asked you to marry her

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33  HER

Oh I knew she liked you for a longgggg time

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42  ME

Well we did talk about that.

Our fucking kids had names.

EX/NAMED REDACTED said a lot of things and filled my head with dreams and crushed every single one of them.

I had a lot of ideals before her.

Now, it's hard for me to believe in anything but what I can see or prove on my own.

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43  HER

Oh God you dodged a bullet with her. She just uses people

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44  ME

Bullshit. That bullet went right through me.

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44  HER

Oh I know that

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46  ME

I've been fed lines and bullshit my entire life.

From people that were supposed to care about me.

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48  HER

I’m at a loss for words.

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50  ME

And people wonder why I disappear.

I know you are. There's nothing to say.

And I'm sorry I'm dumping all this on you

But its just how I feel.

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51  HER

Don’t ever be sorry.

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51  ME

I've seen to much and I know too much.

And I can't unsee the ugliness that I've seen in humans.

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52  HER

I know hard to get images out

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52  ME

It's disenchanting.

Takes all the wind out of your sails.

All my friends come from nothing. So we all have tender hearts. We know true pain like the back of our hand, so we don't want to hurt anyone.

But we all just get dragged through the mud and beaten up.

Like, when's it gonna end, ya know?

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55  HER

I guess when we die

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55  ME

But it is when 90 percent of the world is nothing but predators.

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55  HER

Gotta be better in the after life

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56  ME

Yea. I can't think about that cause it'll lead me to thoughts of getting there sooner than later.

My mind will just run at that like a magnet.

I'm tired of being tired of this.

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57  HER

Omg do not do that the ones you leave behind suffer the most

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, 6:00  ME

Yea. Well the ones I leave behind don't seem to have a problem with me being in constant pain.

They just don't want to have to deal with death and grief.

Who's the more selfish?

The suicide victim or the people that didn't want them to go because they didn't want to have to deal with the loss?

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, 6:01  HER

Both?????

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, 6:01  ME

Yep

That's the reality

No answers. No right or wrong.

And being a kind person never earns you any credit or gets you any buffer from a world of gnashing teeth.

[jamesrbailey]

Sore Throat and constant reminders of malfunction

I can't handle this People keep talking in circles Repeating the same things in different ways Flapping their gums with nonsense Word vomit and ear worms Digging at my brain Intellectually vacant idiots With dumb questions And entitled arrogance Everyone wants something for as close to nothing as they can get There isn't a place that exists That I can get far enough away So much rage for one person to handle We are not one in the same Please leave me alone I can't stand the sound of your voice I can't stand the look on your face Your vacant expression Makes me want to crush every bone in its place I am not my brothers keeper I do not love my neighbor I am nothing like any of you None of you have ever given any quarter to me You've abused and misled And burned in my brain All the trauma and sadness That man can create There is nothing I wouldn't do To not be one of you Renounce my humanity Like citizenship Get the dirt in my teeth Get the fire on my breath Control demolition Toss the ashes that are left What the fuck kind of life Could we possibly think we could have Not for people like us

Stuck is this putrid fucking hole in the ground This place where nothing grows And you don't dare make a sound God curse the fucking moment That anyone set claim to this place

Friends with the dust Asleep in the ashes Worms to keep me company The maggots heal my lashes No one ever told us how to live We were all on our own So how can anyone expect us To not get it wrong Where the fuck were any of you To watch over me This train has derailed and it took out the foundation The structure to hold the framework thats built into me

[jamesrbailey]

the day she went away

I lived with a woman for 4 years, who chased me for 7 years. We had been friends for years, but i was very shy and our friendship had meant too much to me to ever ruin with a relationship. I wish i would have listen to myself, cause that’s exactly what happened and i watched in unfold before my very eyes in the exact way that i predicted it would. Despite popular opinion, i do get tired of being right all the time. It’s a curse. We were young, but we had been in love for a very long time. Finally, with 30 on the horizon and teetering into the end of our twenties, she moved back home from a few years spent in North Carolina, which was miserable and frought with anxiety for her. I should have seen the red flags but i was still very untrusting of my instincts and dealing with my own mental illness. To be honest, she caught me with my guard down and preyed on my weaknesses. I didn’t know it until very much later. She would come over my house very late into the night. I have never been much of a sleeper so I am always awake. My window was on the ground level so friends would just knock on my window to let me know they were there and i would meet them at the door so they didn’t have to interupt my parents who we’re brooding and strict. My friends were terrified of my parents, especially my step father who never had a nice thing to say or a hello to any of my friends. It hindsight it was a generation gap thing, but I never asked to be born, and i certainly had never asked him to move into my house with my mother, so we had our differences. In the wee hours of the morning, she would come over and hang out with me through the night. we’d talk for hours and watch three stooges re runs, laughing our heads off, getting closer and closer. I was very wounded, having left a very bad relationship that i was still reeling from some 2 years later, and also manifesting some very serious mental illness in the form of PTSD, so my head wasn’t screwed on too tight, and she took advantage of that weakness. She was very abrupt in her approach. She would say things like “i need someone to have sex with. I don’t trust anyone else, i trust you, so i’d like us to be able to do that”. I would shyly laugh and turn my eyes to the ground. People with this kind of honesty always made me uncomfortable, but she’d push on with “I’m serious. If you don’t want to do this i really need to know.” I tried to tell her that i was damaged goods and it might not be a good idea, she persisted, swearing that she could fix all that, which i knew was bullshit. She would sit behind me on the edge of the bed and put her arms and legs around me in an embrace and say things like “See how well we fit together.” It was total manipulation, and i fell for it hook, line, and sinker. She was actually the woman that took my virginity, so we had that connection, on one fateful tryst of ours, it happened somehow so she has always had my “V card” so now, years later, she was back to collect more. My other relationship, fresh out of highschool, ended with a lot of pain. We were simply too young to be that much in love. She was going off to college, and i had no clue what i wanted to do with my life but play music. I certainly wasn’t going to college. High school was traumatizing enough. I was just kinda floating through life unsure of what to do next, working a shit job at a dunkin donuts and feeling miserable all of the time. The girl was definitely persistent. I tried to back out cause i was feeling this pit in my stomach every time she said something referring to “us” or being a “thing”. My stomach would turn, something wasn’t right. I didn’t know what it was cause i had definitely been in love with her in my youth, living two houses down from each other. She was “the girl next door”, and she was beautiful. She had been a constant object of my desire throughout the years. Why wasn’t i feeling it now? I asked a friend for advice, which was probably a bad move considering this person didn’t know anything about life or love. I had to guide him on a lot of his own bullshit. He simply said “Dude, it’s Jen. Go for it.” Which made sense to me, everyone knew that we had a thing for a long time. The only people that didn’t know were us, and now in our twenties it seemed like it was a sure thing. I decided to not trust my gut and to go with it. I have always had a certain sensitivity, a certain sixth sense when it comes to things. My mother tells me stories of me just knowing things as a kid that I shouldn’t have known. Names of people I shouldn’t have known and what they had done. I just pick up on things, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but i have learned to harness it and listen to it, finally. It’s always right, and there have been so many times where i have tried to convince myself that its wrong and I am being ridiculous to think that a gut feeling has any actual decision making clout. Lesson learned and hard! So we did it. We got together. I let her in. She slowly became my world, my girlfriend. It was hard for us to even refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend because it was so weird after all these years, RED FLAG. We slowly let ourselves get tangled in it, we let our roots grow deep into each other over the course of 4 years. During this time she struggled with her own mental illness of depression and anxiety. She would have these really bad bouts of self loathing that made no sense to me. I am not stranger to self loathing, but i like to think that i know how to separate my crazy from reality. She never seemed to be able to do that. She would listen to the negative voices in her head and run with their scenarios until she was in tears and somber face, convinced that she was a horrible person. I couldn’t see it clearly at the time, not like i can now, who ever does. It wasn’t all bad, we had a lot of good times and a lot of love. She definitely opened my world up sexually, and i followed her lead. The things we did together still boggle my mind for how we ended up. We’ll get to that later in this story, but for now we’ll stay on topic. Rather quickly, she started to pick at me. She would make constant comments on my mannerisms and eccentricities, trying to point out little flaws that i had in my daily routine or thinking, to which i really didn’t care about. Sure, i do things a little unorthodox but it doesn’t harm anyone and it works for me. I have my own way of doing things and it has always worked for me. She just couldn’t seem to make peace with that fact. She had to constantly point out my short comings and turn things into a big deal. We got an apartment together and it instantly became “her” apartment and i was just living there. My stuff was to be out of sight and out of the way while hers was everywhere, which is fine by me, i don’t really care, but don’t ask me to act like any of it is mine. I’m not going to touch your stuff our clean your stuff. Suddenly, I am not contributing to the apartment. I’m not cleaning up after myself, I just go in my room and stay there, where she clearly pushed me into. I went into this relationship as a loner. She was well aware of how i am. I need my alone time, but she would always have a “quick question” while im reading or have to open my door to say something or tell me some arbitrary story that has nothing to do with me and i don’t even care about. I patiently listened, but because I didn’t react the way she wanted she would turn it into an issue. The words “why do you hate me so much” came out of her mouth more than once. I never said anything of the sort. I didn’t hate her at all. In fact, i loved her. I just wanted to unwind after working a shit job all day. I wanted a few minutes to myself and not have to hear her prattling on about something that i have no clue about. I can’t even make heads or tales about the story or the characters in the story that shes talking about, so why do i even need to hear this anyway? It might have been a little cold, and i tried to do better, but i am simply not that person. I couldn’t be this person that she wanted me to be. I just couldn’t, as much as i tried. She started going out to bars with friends and coming home drunk and not wanting me to see her that way. I started to notice that she might have a problem with substances. She had a tendancy to indulge, and not know her limits. She’d drink till she was sloppy and come home a miserable mess. I grew up with an alcoholic father so drunk people freak me out, and i wanted nothing to do with it. I can’t stand the personality shift, it jars me. We eventually moved into her childhood home cause her mother went to care for her own mother, and her father was disabled and living in a home. This left the house vacant, so we paid rent towards the mortgage and we could live there. A house to myself sounded like a great thing. No old lady below us pissed off that we’re making the slightest bit of noise. No feeling like we’re paying too much money to live in an apartment that is not nearly worth it, and on a shitty part of town filled with bars and drunk people constantly walking up and down the road. The drivers side window of my van was smashed in with a brick by shitty neighborhood kids who ran off laughing. That was 200 dollars out of my pocket that i didn’t have, to replace the window. We moved into her childhood house and everything went downhill very fast. She couldn’t sit still in her own skin. She had to pick at everything. Nothing was ever right or perfect enough for her. I wasn’t doing enough, when i clearly couldn’t be doing anything more. I had to constantly check in with her, letting her know where i am, when i’ll be home, what my time frame was. I had to wake her up to let her know that i was leaving for work because it scared her to wake up and realize i wasn’t there. These were things that I was not comfortable with, but i did them anyway because she asked me to. I have always been a loner. When i wake up in the morning for work I am always in a bad mood. I am not a morning person and waking up is hard for me. To have to go out of my way to wake her up to let her know that I am leaving for work is kind of annoying, but I did it cause I can be reasonable. It was a constant obsession to know where i was, where I was going, what i was doing. I don’t know why? I’m not sleeping around, I am definitely not the type of person to be pulling bullshit behind anyones back. I’m way too high strung and mentally unstable for any of that shit. Most times i was at band practice anyway, which i have to turn my phone off cause we had a policy of ‘dont be on your phone’. This was never enough for her, and it caused a lot of fights where she didn’t think she was asking for much, and i assured her that it was getting in the way of my life and daily comings and goings. She tried to tighter her grip around me and manipulate all aspects of my life, We went to a doctor and got her on psyche meds. She started taking prozac and klonopin for anxiety, and started talking to a therapist cause it was clear she had some psychiatric issues going on here. For a while, the meds seemed to be working. She was lightening up, things were going ok, but she was putting on weight cause of the meds and she would pick at her face seeing pimples that weren’t there until her face was a mess of red blotches. The meds worked in some areas but this issue was bigger than simple depression. She hated the weight that she had put on, even though she had been too skinny to begin with. She had a bit of a cocaine problem from her last relationship and she had lost a lot of weight and gotten very gaunt and bony. To see her actually filling out was nice. She never looked more beautiful to me, but she couldn’t see it. To her, it was fat, and she was getting fat, and in the girl world that is a NO NO. It never bothered me, not for one second. In the midst of having to constantly check in with her and let her know where i am, she suddenly stopped coming home. I was to report my position all the time, but when she didn’t come home from hanging out with friends all night, that was no big deal. I was to assume that she was just staying there. It turned into days away from home, and it left me sitting alone in a house that wasn’t mine wondering what the hell was going on. A friend of hers, who was an out lesbian had a crush on her for a long time, and was very forward about it. She didn’t want to be just friends, though she insisted that she didn’t want to be in a relationship with this person. I even asked her if something was going on between them and she denied it. She reassured me that I had nothing to worry about, she could never do that. Slowly but surely the worm started to grow, and she would be home less and less, and i started to feel left out of the equation. One day she laid me down next to her and asked me if i thought she was gay. I was silent for a minute and then i realized that she was trying to say something without saying it. I asked her if she felt that way and she quietly admitted that she was feeling that way. I burst into tears cause i realized that our relationship was over and everything had been a lie this entire time. She was trying to reassure me that it wasn’t a lie, which didn’t make sense if she was gay. We sat there and cried, we held each other, we tried to talk it out. In the end i just had to get away from her. I was one of the most painful things I have ever been through. I had let this person into my life, when i was so weary of her in the first place. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but it did. I didn’t want to ever have to break up with her and lose her cause I wasn’t sure I could recover from that, but i had to do all of that. I had to pull the knife, slowly and painfully from my guts and push my entrails back into my body, pick myself up and walk away to heal. Over the course of weeks she went back and forth from being gay to not thinking she was gay, and she was making a mistake. She was just confused. She didn’t want me to go. I told her i had to leave, that I couldn’t just stay around here and let this dig at me. She asked me to stay, she begged me to stay, and somehow i did. She started dating her friend and she slowly moved her new girlfriend into our home. I was so beaten up and traumatized that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up and say “this is fucked up and it’s killing me, so i have to go”. She wanted both of us. She wanted to keep us there all to her self. When her girlfriend got uncomfortable, finally, with me being there, then she sat me down and asked me to leave. Again, we burst into tears. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t have a job at that point. She had exhausted me of every resource that I had. She drained me of everything and at my lowest and weakest point she asked me to leave. I called my alcoholic father and asked him if I could stay with him for a while, which he agreed to. I lasted a week there before he drunkenly stuck his finger in my face for not taking a shower in the morning. I was depressed and traumatized from a really bad relationship and break up, I was sleeping all day, of course i wasn’t showering. I needed understanding, not judgement and regulation. I felt a rage rising inside of me with this old drunk man in front of me with his finger in my face. It took everything in my power not to throw my fist and knock his front teeth down his throat, because thats what i wanted to do at that moment. That’s what I wanted to happen. I wanted to take everything out on his withered old ass. All the years of him never being there for me, and the one time i actually needed him, this is what i got. I felt that rage rising inside of me and intrusive thoughts slipping into my consciousness. All i did was snicker at him and say “ok, man.” That was the last words I spoke to him for 7 years, The next day I called up a friend who had a room for rent in his apartment. This friend was kinda only good in small doses and bit hard to get along with but i was in a spot and i was desperate and i knew I couldn’t stay at my fathers house. One week later and I am moving again, to a shitty apartment in North Syracuse, with no job, not a dollar to my name, not even a bed to sleep in. My life had fallen the fuck apart,. She wanted to remain in contact with me because we shared a dog together. I had taken the dog with me to my fathers, but I couldn’t have it at my new apartment, so I had to bring my dog back to her house. She assured me I could visit and she would bring the dog by my apartment for a few visits, which we did a few times. My depression grew to an all time low. I was finally diagnosed with PTSD. I wasn’t talking to either side of my family because they were equally crazy and didn’t know what to do with me. I had an episode where i grabbed my mother in a threatening manner when she was a little too harsh on my niece, who i had raised from a baby. I had seen the damages that growing up like that had done to me and I wasn’t going to allow my mother to do it to my niece. I lashed out in anger and I should have handled it better, but I was not in my right mind. I went into self imposed exile for 7 years from family and most friends. I had to lick my wounds and heal. Years later, talking to close friends about it all, they all reported that “none of us knew what to do, we didn’t know how to help you.” I can’t blame them. I am a slippery character. I don’t let people help me, and I very much keep to myself and handle my own business. How could they know how to help me, especially in a situation like that. I contacted my ex on a day where i felt a little less raw than usual. I told her that I needed her to not contact me anymore. I could no longer control myself and I wasn’t sure what I would do or what I would say to her if she kept acting like we could be friends. I couldn’t handle it. I asked her to respect my wishes. I had learned through friends that our dog was sick. She had bone cancer. I told her that when the dog dies I don’t need to know. I don’t want to be contact. I simply wish to be left alone until i report back saying that I can be contacted. She reluctantly agreed, based on the fact that she had been pretty beat up emotionally from all of this as well. It was just better if we parted ways. It’s been almost 9 years now, and I only saw her once when i ran into her and her girlfriend at a clothing store in the mall. We pretty much ran away from each other. I was with my new girlfriend who i quickly found in the store and said “we gotta get the fuck out of here! Jen’s here and I don’t want to see her!” We ran for the door and BAM, ran right into them doing the exact same thing. I caught a glimpse of her and she just looked away and looked at the floor. She couldn’t even look at me. Couldn’t give me the decency of acknowledging my presence. That kinda pissed me off, but I let it go. I just walked away and we left the mall and I haven’t seen or heard from her since. Last i knew, she and her girlfriend were selling drugs out of that house. Her girlfriend was making millions selling drugs, and keeping her supplied with drugs as well, so it looks like she just fell into complete corruption and turned into a vile human being. I removed myself completely of any of that. I asked people not to say her name around me. Don’t tell me what she’s doing. Don’t tell me what she’s up to. Don’t tell me that she’s constantly inebriated. I don’t want to know. She made her bed, she can lie in it. All of this happened, and I didn’t even want to be in a relationship with her in the first place. I should have trusted my gut, and that was the last time I ever went against my better judgement. It was a hard lesson and one I will not soon forget. Now, i have nothing to offer anyone. The world gets nothing from me. You want something from me? You’re talking to a wall. I filter all my friends and relationships. The damage has been done. I have healed, but the scars remain. I am just an outsider and i always will be. There is nothing I can do about that fact. I ask nothing from anyone, anymore. I see old friends and i have to hear things like “so i hear you’re like a recluse now?” to which i reply “was i ever not a recluse?” which they come back with “Yea, but i hear it’s way worse than it’s ever been.” I hadn’t even noticed. I just stick to myself and do my own thing alone, now. I have no need for other people. I have a handful of friends that I trust, but they leave me alone and don’t expect much from me. If you need something from me or need me to be more present in your life, i just disappear. I just leave. You’ll never see me again. That’s the discipline. I am anonymous and unimportant. Go feed off of someone else. I’m not your man. Some might say that I am broken, or damaged. I have heard tell of that. I just no longer care. Whatever i am, it works just fine this way, and I see no reason to change it. I am not rocking the boat. I am staying down this time. Everyone else go about your business.

[jamesrbailey]

Conversations with other bands about touring, and being older and still touring in a band.

but yea man, we're still just dudes with instruments trying to make something happen. never been any rock star shit in our band. we've just been doing it for a long time. thats what all the hype is about architect. we've just been there when all of it was going down. doesn't make us any ahead of the game than any other new band that might pop up. people get it twisted all the time. sometimes people book us expecting this huge turn out and to not have to do much promotion and then their show tanks and they don't understand why. we've had so many promoters say to us "but you guys are Architect. i was sure this show was gonna be huge." and it wasn't and they cannot for the life of them understand why. we have these gray areas around the US where people don't know us from a hill of beans. we have areas where we are very well received, but we have areas where the name Architect doesn't mean anything to anyone, and we are very aware of that, so we try let promoters know ahead of time that we are not as big as they may think we are. we are certainly no red chord, or acacia strain. people don't know who we are cause we have never been a band to self promote. we have never been very good at getting on social media and touting how awesome we are. it's always seemed very antithetical to what we're about. we try some things every once in a while, but this has been a very grass roots, very word of mouth development of a following over the years. it's simply "tell your friends."

but, what following we do have is VERY loyal to us, cause usually they've spoken to us personally and put us up for a place to stay and we've hung out and broke bread, so people tend to remain loyal to us cause we aren't just going to use you. we appreciate that people give a shit about us and our music, so we give the love back 200 percent. we treat our people very good. thats really the only thing that matters to us.

we come from punk rock ethics, and we've never strayed from that. we're very insular about our band. this is for us, first and foremost. we started this band to have an emotional outlet because we watched one of our best friends die of brain cancer in our 20's. it was the death of innocence for us. we were pretty invincible kids at the point and then cancer came and smacked some reality into our lives that this shit is fragile and could be over at the drop of a hat. it took one of us out HARD, and we watched him slowly die for 3 years. after that we were kinda traumatized, so we just all kinda looked at each other and someone blurted out "lets just start something pissed." that was it. we just started writing music. we had come from very melodic bands before architect. 2 of us was in a doom metal band that was less weed doom and more funeral doom. so i came from writing strong, sad melodies to not wanting to be sad anymore cause it just made me think of my dead friend who wanted to be here more than i ever wanted to. he loved it more, and he wanted it more, and here i am healthy as a horse, pissing and moaning. so we kinda rejected melody for a while cause it made us sad. we started writing things that were dissonant. i remember thinking "i want my guitar to not sound like a guitar. i want it to sound like steel beams falling down a cliff, or a wild animal roaring, or like a mac truck idling." so we started writing things in 4ths. barring chords in standard tuning so the notes would argue with each other and make raucous noise. i wanted the guitar to be an extension of my anger for my friend not being able to be here with us, and also my anger toward the way life was constantly telling us that it had to be a certain way that did not fit us in the least bit. everyone fits in this little prepackaged box, all snug, but we had never fit in that box. it was always an act of contortion to even try to fit in that box that everyone wanted us to be in, so we just rejected all of it. we went on tour for 10 years and said "fuck home". we just stayed out on the road, cause everything at home was sadness and death and a reminder that life is not pretty. that first record was a lot of pain and anger. we were at each others throats writing it. our drummer at the time used to get so frustrated that he would smash his drum set every night at practice. throw his cymbals and kick his toms out of the way, go outside and have a cigarette to calm down while we would be crossarms waiting until he was done pouting, he'd come back in, not say a word. set his drums back up, click a 4 count and we'd start playing again. cause thats how much pain we were in. we just had an agreement with each other that we were probably going to piss each other off and it wasn't personal, we just had to understand that when one of us burns out, to let him get it out and he'll come back in and get back to work. all of us had our turns with burning out and freaking out. i smashed a guitar and tried to put my head through a door at one point out of sheer frustration of not getting a part right. we just had to laugh it off and clean the blood up and get back to it, cause music and writing that record was the only thing keeping us distracted enough to not lose ourselves in the grief of what our friends death had done to all of our lives. everything was pulled under with him after that. no one went unscathed. our whole town changed and a lot of people never came back from that. he was a staple of our scene and our community and he had a lot of friends and a lot of people just couldn't deal with him being gone, so a lot of people that we needed were never seen or head from again. it was an awful awful time.

the whole time we just put up blinder on our eyes, kept our heads down and just kept going, and through it all we got to a point where it was 10 years later and we had actually "done something", which we really had not intended to do at all. we were just kinda putting one foot in front of the other, playing any show we could, setting up on any floor we could and raging out. i think the potency or our pain really clicked in with a lot of people, i'd be stupid to ignore that it had that effect. it wasn't expected but it's definitely there.

Central New Yorkers are emotional cripples. this place is the land the time forgot. nothing grows here. local government is constantly breathing down your neck. you can't do anything here but work a shit job and sleep, so we're very hard people. you don't surive around here if you let yourself get too emotional, so we tend to be a little overly aggressive and brunt at times, which we had to learn to pull back on once we got out of the northeast and realized we were freaking people out with how loud and aggressive we were. back home, everyone is like this. outside of the northeast, people are actually relaxed and polite, and they aren't too partial to our "bull in a china shop" attitudes. that was a hard lesson, learning how to approach people that weren't New Yorkers. Having people say things to you like "Ya'll curse so much. Where are ya'll from? Ya'll need to come to church with us, we're goin in about 20 minutes if ya'll wanna come. we think ya'll need jesus" or "why do you guys call each other names all the time. i just heard you call your friend "dick head", you guys are really rude to each other." it had never even occured to us. thats how we do it back home. we grew up calling each other "hey asshole." or "yo, dildo!" i still have a best friend that i've known since i was a teenager who refers to me only in insulting names. we laugh about it, we think its funny. its our sense of humor, but we forget that it doesn't come natural to people and not everyone is going to get it. that was a really hard lesson, leaving new york.

[jamesrbailey]

So NOW everyone wants to talk about mental illness and suicide, huh?

These are excerpts from my own personal facebook, and discussions with people in my town on the subject. It’s ugly, but it’s also a part of life, and we ar taught to live in denial of it. Then it springs up and the shit hits our very own fan and we simply aren’t prepared to deal with it. Prepare yourself, death is inevitable, and waiting.  ---------- TRIGGER WARNING! we're going to talk about suicide. it seems that some of you are struggling to understand suicide since the untimely death of our hero anthony bordain. here's the honest truth. there is nothing that anyone can do, or could have done. if you are even confused about that reasons, that means that you have never felt that kind of bleak depression. thats a good thing, you don't want to go there. the people that live through this every day, who get out of bed and feel that ache inside, who feel like they could burst into tears at any minute of the day; everyday, who live with two voices in their head constantly arguing, one louder than the other telling them to give up and stop delaying the inevitable, one that is constantly telling them that there is no point to any of this but hurt and loss. thats how the suicidal and the depressed feel everyday. you'll have to trust that i know what im talking about because i have struggled with this since my teens. if you want to call it a selfish act, thats fine. you're right. it is selfish. it's ALSO selfish to want to keep someone in agonizing, constant psychological pain because the people in their lives don't want to have to deal with death and loss. people don't want to grieve and mourn a dearly departed so they keep them in limbo of "life support". if you've never experienced how that feels, how agonizing that kind of pain is, than you have no room to judge, because i can tell you first hand that it is a living hell. your food tastes bland, the skies look greyer, every joy is overshadowed with this feeling of numb. every smile is forced, all the good things that you know you should be happy about don't make you feel anything, and THAT fact builds a guilt in you that you can't even imagine. you can see your first child born, and feel nothing but emptiness. it's called anhedonia, look it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia when you can't feel good about anything in life, and everything seems pointless and stupid to you, you start to reach out. you try all the medication, you try all the different cocktails. antidepressants with the right combination of antianxiety meds. whoops, that one gave you serotonin syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome gotta try some new meds, and wait a week for those to kick in and do it all over again. you talk to therapist after therapist after therapist about the same old thing, and none of them seem very good at their job or even have a clue what you are going through, but they are being paid by the hour and boy insurance companies love to dodge paying for psychiatry. when a dog is in pain and the bill for surgery is too high, you put the dog down. it's very sad, and the family is very hurt, but it's the humane thing for someone to do, ease the pain and get it over with. we are not better than dogs, if you think a human life means more than a canine life, then your reasoning is flawed, and you have to go back and reassess some values. people don't kill themselves to hurt you. they aren't trying to put a permanent blight on the rest of their loved ones lives, but it's an unfortunate result of living and having loved ones. someone is always going to get hurt, whether we live on or die. don't be so selfish and think only of yourself and your own pain you're in when someone has taken their own life. imagine what they were feeling, and it's probably what you are feeling intensified by a million. life is a selfish act, there are variables to selfishness. the accumulation of wealth when so many are poor is selfish. letting food go bad in your refrigerator because you have an overabundance is selfish. throwing away your leftovers because you no longer want them is selfish. WE ARE ALL SELFISH. one doesn't outdo the other. so lets ease up on the condemnation and look at your own skeletons in your closet. you aren't any better off. have a little understand and respect peoples decisions and wishes even if you disagree with them. to each his own. it's not your life, and they are the only ones who have had to live it. --------------------