mr-sean-holly

[mr-sean-holly]

I have always thought that inspirational and motivational quotes were things people mindlessly told themselves to make it seem to others that they feel slightly less shitty about their lives. But I've realized that it's actually possible to feel and embody what they say, as opposed to just saying them. Once I convince myself of that reality, nobody can stop me from loving myself.

[mr-sean-holly]

I have a year and two thirds left with my undergraduate degree at Northwestern University. I am studying music performance. Last school year I realized that I had been considering killing myself every day for at least 6 weeks, and that thinking as such was abnormal. I saw a school psychologist. Soon after I took medical leave on account of the state of my mental health. I enrolled in an outpatient program in Evanston and attended that until I decided to stop and stay the rest of my medical leave with my parents in North Carolina. I ended up taking a few private trombone lessons with some professionals in the area and substituting in a couple local ensembles. I practiced five hours a day. I was no longer in a sick mindset.

 Then I returned to school in Spring Quarter. I started off fine. I enrolled in the usual required courses for a trombone performance major, plus an academic class. I eventually dropped the academic course because I could tell it was going to be too much of a stressor on my life. I finished out the quarter with a Spring recital. That went fairly well, but afterwards was Summer break. I was set to attend the Southeast Trombone Symposium in late June. When I attended, I was disgusted by the people who I was classmates with. They didn't really care about music; all we talked about was who won what job or who teaches at what school. No real world experiences were really shared. After that experience I played in the pit orchestra for an NU musical. That went well. I have realized that I might want to quit school, since I really hate doing school work and I have a year and two thirds left of school, at one of the toughest schools in the nation. I am not really looking forward to that. I have yet to register for classes for the 2018-19 school year since I have some unexpected registration hold on my account. I want to find a job as a bartender in the area for some extra cash. I honestly might have more of a chance making a living as a bartender than as a classical musician.

[mr-sean-holly]

There's something about having spent months on end, multiple instance in my life, during which not a single day goes by where I don't think about ending my own life. Something about those experiences changed my perspective. The blinders of life have loosened a bit. I began to consider other paths of life, other ways to make it successfully to a natural end. For a while there, I thought the only thing I would be happy doing for work would to be a musician. But now I'm not sure I can guarantee myself happiness by taking any particular path at all. My search for happiness has been supremely difficult and strenuous, and I'm no longer convinced that I can achieve happiness through activities that I choose to fill my life with. In other words, choosing a path seems pointless.

I did not feel happiness today, but there was a brief moment during which I was calm. I was riding my bike, I didn't worry about being hit by an inattentive driver, and I didn't think about intentionally riding myself under a bus. I simply observed the summer weather as I rode home. Once I had realized that I experienced this calmness, the feeling was immediately overshadowed by the same intense dread that I had been experiencing non stop for months on end. Yet that experience was still a small inhale from an oxygen tank, and so I live another day.

[mr-sean-holly]

I sat on a porch attached to the home belonging to my sister and brother-in-law. A newly built and beautiful, tall and slender single townhouse, domestically decorated with graphic prints from Target. The Seattle air was humid, and cool. Airplanes flew by, descending to land at one of the nearby airports, and I would occasionally look up from my book to watch one disappear over the ridge. At this point it was much too dark to see any markings on the aircrafts, but following the lights into the distance was plenty entertainment for me.

The sun had set a few hours ago, and I sat waiting for my sister to come home from picking up my parents at SEATAC. I sat in a tall, small-seated metal chair that lacked arms, or any feature designed with comfort in mind, for that matter. A round table to match, and a second chair the same as the one I sat on helped occupy the balcony. The table top shone its bright orange color under the strung up plastic white-light bulbs. The cover of the novel I was reading was also orange, although slightly darker. Upon the thick steel railing rested 4 planters, each containing two planned herbs, done so by my brother-in-law, Eric. On the table was a smaller concrete planter packed to the brim with succulents, who's leaves went from green to red. The succulents were gifted to them by Eric's grandmother, the one they call the Grey Tornado. On the opposing end of the balcony from where I was placed stood a large Weber grill.

As I sat there reading, I couldn't help but view myself from a third person point of view. I was wearing blue jeans, sneakers, a grey linen button down shirt with a stand-up collar, and a faux-leather moto jacket with the cuffs rolled up. I felt simultaneously in place and out of place, and I had framed in my mind a painting of the scene I was living. It was positively American; a contemporary Norman Rockwell would have had a sketch of it in no time.

[mr-sean-holly]

A dream I had in Indianapolis

I was in a building. One that used to be a home. Two stories, and a basement. The house was made primarily of wood, which has turned gray and black. It was an old, decrepit building, with exposed dripping and slimy pipes, with ample dirt and dust. There were no lights on in either of the upper two floors, but there were a few incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceilings, no more than one per room.

While on the main floor, I was talking on the phone with my mom. As she was speaking, her voice began to get strained: she was being asphyxiated, choking on every breath. She was screaming my name, but she couldn't scream. Her cries were forcibly shoved through her violently closing airways. I ran down to the basement, where it was as if someone had converted an old boiler room into a cramped, makeshift workspace, lit with a single uncovered and dying light bulb, hanging above what could only be described as a ping-pong table turned operating-table, or perhaps vice versa. In this room was a large man with a head as hairy as a cue ball and as smooth as an asteroid. His build was that of a strongman competitor who collapsed spectacularly into alcoholism. He was wearing a dirty gray longsleeve shirt made of rough fabric, tucked into black work pants, with black boots. I did not hear him speak, yet his voice was like bellows: a low, airy and forced exhalation. He looked at me knowingly. I asked him what he did to her. His eyes let out a mountainous chuckle as he pat his enormous stomach. This creature had jailed my mother in his stomach, suffocating her.

I now had a razor blade in my hand. The monster was now on the ground, me on top of him looking at his disgusting pale eyes. I put the razor to his bottom lip, vertically in the middle, ready to slice this man open down the middle like a cow in a slaughterhouse. I placed the razor through his skin, down to his jawbone. Slowly and carefully, like an architect, I drew a clean, straight line down his chin, splitting his jaw down the middle. Pushing up through the bottom of his mouth with the corner of the blade, following the centerline of his trachea, carving up a vanilla bean. Down I sliced until I had opened his whole upper body. There was no blood, only his flesh falling open like a worn out leatherbound book. I then took the blade again, just below his right ear. I pressed it in, pulled fast and, pressing hard, cut across his throat, all the way to his left ear, making him smile one last time. His blood flooded out. I saved my mother.