miserian-blog

[miserian-blog]

Numbing

It’s 5 PM on a Monday. My girlfriend is at work. It rained off and on all day. With all the “inspiration” in 2017, my writing today has been uninspired. And by uninspired, I mean dogshit that causes apoplectic fits of insecurity with very verbal complaints to no one in particular.

In lieu of continuing to scribble in my notebook, I’m watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson make a fucking cake on a show called Nerdy Nummies (which makes me think of an overly-obsessed baby with an abundant teething ring collection). My depression couldn’t be more thrilled that I have abstained from writing temporarily to watch this video. He is jumping up and down through my cortices and synapses in joyful bounds as I slowly crumble. Neil’s “Occupy Mars” t-shirt is only a dark reminder that annihilation is imminent and I’m wasting my precious time (of my own wish) to occupy this place far away, that with some hope and know-how and innovation, I can get to Mars. (All inclusive sentimental cheese)

As the video starts I can’t tell if Neil is mimicking the host’s voice and excitement, or if he is truly excited to make this cake. They are making a Star Trek inspired pistachio cake. Now, I am no fan of either, nor do I want to consider what a pistachio cake might taste like. About a minute and half in the two bakers have choreographed a catchphrase and hand twirl that sends me into an intuitive seizure of emotions.

The whole video makes me sad. Sad because I expected more sciencey shit. Sad, for not finding it cutesy; angry, for finding it sad; depressed, that I’m watching it at all. Meanwhile, my notebook sits open on the table, dull pencil put away.

Mostly, I hate that I’m watching it at all because it means depression is winning the war. In a romantic world, I’d tell you that my depression fuels my writing and that writing is my therapist which in turn cycles more writing. But really, my depression makes me invisible and apathetic. There isn’t a color that can describe what depression does. Blue is for 1950’s jazz musicians.

He just explained that if the host wanted to eject the whisks from the hand mixer to the sink offscreen, she needs to hold it at a 45-degree angle. Any higher and she’ll fall short; any lower and she’ll overshoot, which, by deduction, anyone could have figured out.

This is the most important thing in my life right now. He is charming, intelligent, engaging. I half expected him to wax poetic on the density of sponge cake, or the speed at which the hand mixer spins and it’s effects on whipping the mixture or whatever asinine information that helps no one but is overall still interesting. Anything to numb the reality that I’m still wasting my time.

Depression is the bully at your high school, making you feel inadequate for eating  your chicken sandwich alone at your third lunch because you failed math the previous semester and there weren’t any other classes that you could take so you had three lunches with no one to sit at each one because your previous social circle was vampiric at best. I know if we ever get to Mars, and somehow I get to chance to be the first writer on Mars, the first Martian historian and record-keeper, living in a private, oxygenized biodome, he’ll be there, ready to remind me it’s pointless that I’m habiting the red planet. The great war in my brain between my depression and me will still continue on, a personal war in space. Knowing him, he’ll be waiting for me, having already thought out how he will once again destroy my psyche further out in the cosmos. Anxiety will attack me on the ride out of Earth — depression’s always willing cohort.

Hopefully, on Mars, there’s still something to kill brain cells. I wonder if there’ll be cake.

[miserian-blog]

In lieu of therapy

I’m aging horribly. The vigors and heat of youth are slowly leaving my body, unfettered sag and wrinkles left behind as if my metabolism got bored and untied the fat inside me. As I watch my peers and age group grow up in the technology age and grow more handsome with glorious beards, smarter with computers, intellectually superior in every way, I grow inward; more narcissistic, more depressed, more anxious.

At times I feel like an ironic hypocrite (hypster?). This blog is a testament to that. Case and point: I fucking hate the internet. I hate the word blog. But like any good self-effacing piece of shit, I want to be part of the hubbub. But mostly, I just need an excuse to write more. Seeing as this is an outlet, it’ll do.

Most days it takes everything I have to not stay in bed and watch Arrested Development for the 9th or 10th time. I have to fight that bastard in the mirror every day because fuck him. Who is he to dictate my fuckin’ life? Albeit, he usually stands victor in some way. Sometimes it’s the way he whispers doubt into my ear when I’m writing. Other times it’s when I’m checking out at the grocery store and I can’t find the right words to respond to “Hello sir, how are you?”.

My biggest goal in all of this is to find that seventeen-year-old punk rock kid I lost in Spokane somewhere. And I want to have the guts to hug him and accept the well-deserved kick in the balls that he owes me. If I find him — and this is a big if, an infinite if — I hope he’ll be more compassionate, smarter, and all-around okay with his place in the world whatever that’s supposed to be.