#who talked about mental health and anti drugs and hope i guess

[vampvelvet]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I've been doing better mentally these past few weeks and a lot of it boiled down to things people have been telling me my whole life. I mean, I had gone through traumatic events some years ago which caused depression. then I fell into a codependent friendship which has worsened my mental state. only now that I have backed out of that friendship and started to think more about myself and how I feel, did I figure out how to keep myself going well.

I found hobbies im interested in, I've been using music I adore to keep my spirits up, I've been getting outside more, getting more exercise, using my phone less, living more in the moment, diversifying my friendships, taking time for myself, etc etc etc

and seeing myself improving in these ways makes me feel optimistic, thinking, these are the things that helped me, they can help you too! it's easy to get excited about that.

but none of those things were the solution to my problem. those were parts of healing, ways to keep my rhythm, ways to give me energy when I feel like going back to what I typically do when I'm depressed.

but they weren't *the solution*. and that made me realize why only now I'm following all this advice that I had been given to me for years and years. why people get so cynical and annoyed when others try to motivate them into getting out of their depression. because staying inside, staying sedentary, overusing phones, avoiding socializing, etc- those things aren't the cause of issues, they're the *symptoms*. and when someone is in a terrible mental state they're not going to realize/notice/care about the things that they're using to cope with their lives.

I don't know what the solution is. everyone's lives are different. for me, it was getting out of a codependent friendship. I don't have the answers. but it's going to be something bigger than just 'getting out more'.

people have to see the future on their own. there are moments when people realize that they have to take their life into their own hands. nothing is easy, but things can get better.

long rant in the tags if you're interested. take care <3

[thanatoseyes]

My mental health?

My therapist says I should talk about my mental health more and I only have like three friends. So I thought I would type it out here. I've had delusions and hallucinations that lasted intensely for a month and while recovering they lasted for a few more months after that. It didn't get better until they upped my dosage of medicine and I still feel like it's not enough sometimes. I don't get the hallucinations any more, but sometimes I get so stuck in my head that it starts to get a little bit delusional.

Some delusions that I've had were as follows:

Believing people were out to get me.

Believing people weren't who they said they were.

Believing that the people that I loved had been replaced with something else.

Believing that the people I loved were trying to cause me harm (i.e. by drugging me).

Believing that people were vampires and there was a hierarchical system.

Believing that the people around me were reincarnations of gods and people from myth.

Believing that the literal devil and angels were walking amongst us.

Believing random strangers were people I knew.

Believing that certain hand signals meant certain things.

Believing that people were talking about me when they really weren't.

Believing that everyone's thoughts were connected in some way, sort of like a fungus.

Now I don't believe those things. I'm taking antipsychotics, anti depressants, and mood stabilizers.

In the hospital I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder with Psychotic Features, but since then I've had another diagnosis Bipolar NOS (not otherwise specified). My symptoms don't follow a regular bipolar diagnosis be it bipolar 1, bipolar 2, or Cyclothymia. I have the symptoms, but they don't check all of the boxes.

Really, the only things I need to be working on are my agoraphobia and paranoia.

All of this sounds like a lot and it is something I haven't actually told anyone. I've told my therapist that I've had delusions that people aren't who they were, but I just left it at that. The rest of the stuff sounded too fantastical and I didn't really want to get into it with them. They weren't my first psychologist, but they have been my longest. I have an appointment with them in a few days. I'm hoping it goes well.

I'm better now. Far better than I have been. But sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget things. I usually have a great memory, but when I was having my psychotic episode time became a bit of a blur and reality started to shift. It was hard to keep track of what I was dreaming and what was real. It turned everything into a messy puddle.

Again, I'm better now. I guess if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. . . I'm not really expecting anyone to read this. It's just something I'm dealing with and I'm hoping if someone reads this they won't feel so alone, because I've felt alone. I felt more alone in those months than I have ever felt in my life.

Au revoir.

[skiesinblue]

I’ll be turning 17 this year, turning into a more mature and responsible person as i think i can be.. to be more realistic and transparent in front of the world, but still not being more of an open person cause there are few things you are suppose to keep within yourself or your circle and it stays till there. Last year i leant a lot of things from life; how actually the world like my parents always mentioned to me about, is, how things work around you, how to carefully take each step in your life while being totally aware of the consequences in the future cause one big or even a small step can bring a huge change in your life. Next year i’m looking forward to a lot of things because as i grow up i have started to understand the working of this earth, it’s every revolution and rotation and different aspects. I’ll be mainly focusing on myself and my family foremost, also some of close friends.

Firstly, what i learnt last year was how actually people are, they can turn into snakes into just a matter of seconds which, not gonna lie, is creepy, scary, terrifying, horrible and above all, risky. Yeah, but there are still some people who are worth something, even though you nearly met them a couple of months ago, they totally get your vibe and that’s totally fascinating!! But honestly, this types are very very few species, you can’t get them everywhere, what i mainly noticed last year was all about negativity i came across among all the people i’ve met in my entire lifetime, and i’ve been noting all the points optimistically, there’s no discrimination on that. The main thing i understood what my parents used to warn me about, “be careful while making friends,” but at time i was an early teenager and i didn’t get things maturely, i was like, “they’ll be just telling and blah blah, it’s something that shouldn’t be bothering me much,” but now it does. I am thankful that my parents are strict against me and now that i’ve been taking every step carefully knowing the circumstances of the future. Kids of my age be doing drugs, parties, toxic relationships and all you say ‘cool’ stuff, i thank my parents cause they kinda actually protected me from all this. Things influence me quickly and as parents they definitely know about it since i’m their kid, ha!! They’ve turned into a person i never thought i would become. I’ve been anti-social which technically means i tend to remain away from all this stuff, and they are absolutely not the reason why i’m anti social; i made myself one ‘cause at one point in my life i understood that all this is not worth anything, it’s just timepass and does not have any such positive outcome; all you gonna end up doing something that’s inversely gonna affect you, your mental or physical health, priory studies and your career most importantly. So yeah, i’m heartily grateful to my parents to mould me into a perfect person i thought i would never be. Since i also started to pre-maturely understand things, i even discuss it with my parents whether if it is any topic or anything, i talk to them pretty openly and it’s feels comfortable discussing things with him; after all they’ve experienced life more than enough than me, i learn things from them and moreover discussing various topics helps me gain certain amount of knowledge required for me to act smart. They help me to get aware of things around, how to act smart and not get left out, etc., basically life lesson after all im going to be adult soon. They’re teaching me various things, as in social networking and i can’t mention how much they help me.

yeah, so i guess that’s it for today. i hope i am going in the right direction my life being all positive and carrying all the good learning’s… i’ll maybe share more thoughts on genres like this since it makes me think positive and more reactive, i guess (??) lmao.

— skiesinblue

[breakingthecycle]

What happened in rehab/ I HATE HAVING TO TAKE MEDICATION.

Okay so, check it. This is my relationship with anti depressants and psychiatry. Let’s start with the years before I ever took them!

I HATED the thought. My mother was always on medication, always sleeping and always crying. They did nothing for her except make her more tired. Or at least that’s what I thought anyway. As far as mental health services were concerned, she was the biggest example for what it could do for you, and to me that meant NOTHING, therapy, medication, absolutely useless. Medication was what you used to go back to sleep when you didn’t feel like participating with the world.

Well boy, was I wrong. Fast forward to me in rehab, consumed with thoughts of killing myself and now no way of easing the pain with alcohol or drugs. I was surrounded by strangers, many of whome couldn’t care less about me, and during my 15 minute phone call once a day, I was listening to my husband call me a bitch and a whore and worthless and that he wanted a divorce, only for the next call to be one where we’re crying and he’s not sure if he wants a divorce. I got 15 minutes and it didn’t matter where in the conversation we were, I hung up. All the names, accusations, I felt I deserved them all. I hated myself more than anything. I would sit and think about ways to kill myself. The girl that had my bed before me, she had slit her wrists and was saved at the local hospital but didn’t come back. I wondered if I could grow the balls to do the same.

At one point I couldn’t take it anymore, I was terrified. I wanted to die so badly but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I demanded that they give me medication. Anything to take away the pain I was feeling. Not only was I feeling this way, but I had to TALK to people about it. I felt as if I was being tortured. There was no way around my pain, every direction I looked, my pain was there staring my in the face. I remember screaming in my room, punching the locker just wanting to leave. So I told them to medicate me, and do it NOW.

I don’t know how I graduated from that facility, but I made it. Did I feel great leaving, not really, but I felt better. I started to experience the kind of gut wrenching-tear inducing- kind of laughter for the first time YEARS. Not once did I laugh this way, but nearly every day of the last week and a half, I smiled and laughed with others. I learned to become vulnerable, to look myself in the mirror and understand.

I realized after I left rehab and reintegrated with people, after a few weeks, I felt different. Like… really different. No longer was I looking at every stranger in fear of what they would think of me, no longer did I feel afraid to tell people who I was. There was a most literal physical relaxation that I hadn’t felt since childhood. I had been holding so much strain in my neck and shoulders that I cried after I got a massage for the first time and relieved the tension. And guess what? It hasn’t come back.

I may not have a flourishing community around me yet, but my relationships with in my family are stronger than perhaps they’ve ever been. I now believe I deserve their love. I now know that it’s okay to open up to others about by pain because it’s not a burden. Two years ago, I could have never said this, but now I say it and mean it. “I am loving, I am lovable and I am loved” I am loving because regardless of what I’ve been told in the past I DO know how to love. I am lovable and I am deserving of the fact that I am loved.

Anywho, I really went off topic there. Let me pull back to finish off. So yes, medication has changed my life. I feel as if I’ve been awakened for the first time since childhood. But there is also the struggle with, “well am I going to need it for the rest of my life?” And I hope not. I’ve tried to come off once and after about a month without it, I felt as if I had a full blown mental regression to the same kind of fear and pain that I felt in rehab. I started taking it again. But only after I had a very difficult conversation with my psychiatrist who made me feel that going back on medication is unhealthy and I’m being too weak. I took it for about a month and then these past two weeks I came off of it again. I know it’s not recommended to do it cold turkey, but it really wasn’t intentional at first. I just kept forgetting and then I wondered, “man I’ve been feeling pretty good, let’s see if we can give this another try.” Well.. today I started getting weepy. Crying at everything. Not necessarily out of sadness, just out of a feeling of vulnerability and I watched or listened to something emotionally powerful and I kept crying. This is how it started last time. This is how I get when I have a really bad chemical imbalance before my period. And I know what comes next. So today, I took my medicine again.

Hopefully one day I will be free of this. I want to have babies and I don’t want to be on medication when I’m pregnant. I want to be stronger. I know so much more, I’m so much more educated about mental health and psychology and why people experience these hard emotions, so why can’t I just overcome them? One day at a time I guess.

[heartslogos]

the declassified texts of the inquisition's elite [188]

(720): I like shiny stuff tho if that’s an emotion

-

“I take it rehab isn't going stellar,” Herah says as Evelyn presses her knuckles to her forehead. “But seeing as how you haven’t broken out in hives, it’s going. It’s going somewhere in some way that isn’t a complete corkscrew nosedive.”

“The good news is that Max is now lucid,” Evelyn says, “And they think that they’ve gotten him through the worst of the lyrium withdrawals. They’ve weaned him down to almost nothing. But apparently the lyrium was helping with his hereto undiagnosed severe depression so now they’ve got to figure out what anti-depressants to get him on without accidentally getting him addicted to something new.”

Herah winces. "That's common in a lot of lyrium withdrawal cases ins't it? They get off or lower their lyrium dose and then they find out that it was actually masking some a mood disorder.”

“Right, but by that point their system is so compromised that introducing any new drug might cause relapse or get them a new addiction of some kind. Out of one fire and straight into another,” Evelyn sighs. “They’re saying he also might have PTSD but Max is denying it and won’t even consider it. He’s refused therapy. He just wants the chemical and physical rehab.”

“Sounds like Max, so at least we know he hasn't been body swapped,” Herah says. It’s a poor attempt at lightening the mood. Evelyn’s mouth twitches up in a half hearted smile anyway. "So, what's the plan? You can’t force him to therapy.”

“No, I can’t. There isn’t a plan. We can hope and pray that Max changes his mind.”

“It’s Max.”

“Yeah. I know. He’s stubborn at the absolute worst times and has a complete blind spot in shape of his own health and wellbeing. Even getting him to agree to cutting off the lyrium wasn’t about his health.” Evelyn shakes her head. “It was a tactical PR move.”

Evelyn’s lips curl into a sneer as she says the words. “I hate that. I hate that I couldn’t get Max to get off the lyrium for his own sake. I hate that Max knows the lyrium isn’t helping — whatever good it can do to augment his physical ability isn’t worth the actual health problems it does cause — and he was willing to up his dosage just so he could get a better edge in workin for the Inquisition. I hate that he thinks his worth is tied to how he ranks among everyone else in terms of combat and intelligence.”

She swallows around a lump of grief and anger in her throat.

“I hate that I couldn’t get through to him and in the end I could only get him to cave by calling it a PR move. It’s so shitty of me.”

“It’s pretty shitty of Max to only agree to it because it’s a PR move,” Herah says. “It’s a shit situation. That’s what lyrium does. It ruins people. But just because a person gets wrecked doesn’t mean it’s game over. They can rebuild. They can recover. And at this point I don’t think we can afford to be choosy about the reasons why Max agreed. We can only be relieved that he did agree.”

The two women sit in silence for a few minutes until Evelyn’s phone lights up. She glances at it, tapping at the screen and slowly reading through the messages.

“Max?” Herah asks.

“Cassandra,” Evelyn corrects. “I guess Max was allowed to text her also before he gave his phone back. She’s worried.”

“We’re all worried.”

“Apparently lyrium withdrawal can also aggravate depressive episodes, even in people without chronic depression,” Evelyn explains. “She’s seen and read about it a few times. It’s possible that if they start treating him for depression without confirming if this is the lyrium withdrawal or a true underlying condition he might get a chemical dependency in the a very bad way.” Evelyn puts her face in her hands. “Fuck. I need to — I need to talk to an expert on this. I’m no biologist. Or pharmacist. Or doctor. You think Stitches will know anything about it?”

“Who knows? Give it a shot,” Herah replies, “I mean. He’s got to know more than you do, right? He is a doctor. Even if he isn’t a neurologist or anything. Hitting pause on that real quick, before you go off — are you okay?”

Evelyn raises her head out of her hands, shooting Herah a blank look. “What?”

“You,” Herah says, “Are you okay? I mean, of course Max is a big concern here. But you’ve got a lot going on. Max. The Inquisition. Trials in Orlais. Court summons in Ferelden. Audience requests in Antiva. I’m sure there’s a ton of other things, too. Are you okay?”

“I mean, sure,” Evelyn says. “I kind of have to be.”

“No, you don’t,” Herah says slowly, “You don’t have to be anything.”

Evelyn’s mouth twitches up at the corners. “Are you telling me it’s okay not to be okay?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I’m okay. Is it okay to be okay?”

“Yeah. But if you weren’t I think we’d all totally get it because you’re juggling about thirty glass balls filled with toxic gas that are likely to kill you if you let even one of them drop. And if you need help with any of those you’ve got a good thirty people in a single group chat who’d be willing to take some of that off your hands for you.”

“Is this a lecture on how to delegate tasks? Those seem to be going around a lot. I overheard Leliana giving Cullen a similar talk.”

“Great. Should I call her over and see if she can make you listen if you won’t listen to me?”

Evelyn holds her hands up in surrender. “No. No. I get it. But I’m really alright. It’s just — compartmentalization, you know? I’m very, very good at it.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“It is what it is and it’s helping me right now. So. I’m going to go find a doctor who can help explains some of this stuff to me. And I can’t do anything to help Max aside from worry. So I’m going to put all of that into a little box for later and then I’m going to go over field reports because that is something I can do. And if any of it becomes too much I swear that I’ll tell someone and hand off some of these mental boxes. So please stop looking at me like that.”

[lanaisnotwool]

397 Financial Collapse from Scarcity

Visit:

http://moneyripples.com/2020/06/11/397-financial-collapse-from-scarcity/

Listen to our Podcast:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/05/07/397--what-is-causing-a-financial-collapse

Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash flow Expert and Anti-financial Advisor. Welcome you out for another show. It's for you and about you. Those who work so hard for your money, and if you're ready for your money, start working harder for you now. You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity today. Not 30 or 40 years from now, but right now. So you work because you want to. So you can do what you love. With those you love whenever you want to. But it's more than just your own fun and comfort and convenience and becoming rich and things like that. We're not talking about driving extravagant cars and yachts and airplanes and things like that. We're talking about having a life that really has meaning. A life of freedom and prosperity for yourself and your family that creates a legacy beyond you. A legacy of abundance and prosperity, not of scarcity.But even more so, it creates a ripple effect through the community and the lives of those that you touch. That you're allowed to bless more lives because you are a Rippler. Out there creating a ripple effect by doing good in the world. You guys, we need more of you than ever. And I'm so excited to be on this bandwagon with you guys, be able to join it on this cause. To be a ripple or to create a ripple effect through you. And I can't tell you how grateful I am that you guys have been a part of this movement. Again, not just because you guys are listening to the show. And I see that the show is growing every week, but on top of that, it's actually incredible to see and hearing the stories you guys come out with.You know, like when I hear people say, Hey, just listen to your show. I found 2000 a month. Or, Hey Chris, like, Hey, I'm starting to do some of these things right now. And I'm now creating a ripple effect. Or, I'm teaching my kids and, and that kind of stuff lights me up guys, because all the pain and the hassle that I went through for years, right? Especially during the last recession. You know, all that time. I remember thinking, man, all this pain I'm going through being over a million dollars in debt, you know, learning how to retire twice. They do it a second time to make it work again. Make sure that these principles are proven to be true. And I remember thinking, if I could just help one person because of the things I'm going through, that would be worth it. And guys, you guys are into the thousands and tens of thousands. And I know this ripple effects gone way beyond that too. And so I'm grateful to be a part of this. Thank you so much.Hey, as quick reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com. There's good stuff on there. Check it out.Okay. Today guys, like I know I just kinda went on a little gratitude rant and I hope you don't mind because I am grateful for you guys. But I want to talk about things that have been on my mind lately, especially with everything going on. Right? You know, the thing I see that there's so many, so much speculation, so many people are like, they want like, you know, a prophet to come out and say, here's what's going to happen. Right? Here's what's going to happen with this or with that or whatever, and sure I've got some things right. Like things that I've been saying that come true. Even when I've talked about before I said, Hey guys, get those lines of credit open and get the cash out now.Wells Fargo just last week announced they're shutting down lines of credit, like including home equity lines of credit. Bank of America said the same thing. The bigger banks already doing it and guaranteed the smaller banks will file a suit. Right? Those are things that I've said. But I want to go deeper. I want to go into, what's really the danger here because everybody's talking about a stupid virus, you know, and they're talking about this and that. And yeah, I get it. It's rough and it's not nice. You know, it's not pleasant, especially for some people, you know, I'll tell you though, prosperity can never be lived in fear. You cannot expect to live in fear and prosper and be abundant. You can't be an abundant when you have feared scarcity in your life. Fear and scarcity and doubt, and all these things only drives money away from you. Drives prosperity away for you.You want to talk about prosperity guys. I'm not just talking about making a lot of money. I'm mostly talking about happiness, joy, meaningful relationships in your life with your family or loved ones, you know, mental health, right? All of these things are part of the same whole. These are true principles. Whether you want them to work or not, they work. So even if you say, Hey, I don't believe in them. It doesn't matter. They're going to work anyways, or they're going to work against you either way. And so there's something that I fear a lot more than a virus right now. In fact, honestly the virus to me is not that scary. You know, I know some of you guys will be ticked by me saying that, I'm sorry. You know, I'll come out and say it. I don't wear masks because I don't feel the need to. Plus there's nobody really around me anyways.So, other than my family, my 5 million kids. Right. But the truth is I'm not going out in public that much anyways. But you know what? I choose not to live in that fear. Now, that doesn't mean I don't respect. And I want people to be kept safe. Especially if they're older, they're immune to compromise. I get that. But here's the thing guys, is that when it comes to prosperity, you cannot live a life hiding. You cannot live your life. Just hunkered down in a hole. I have friends in Spain right now. Guys. I got friends in Spain right now that have been quarantined for months. For over a month and a half now. And guess what? The numbers are barely started to decrease. It didn't take two weeks. Remember, we're suppose to be two weeks in quarantine and then we're supposed to be fine, right? It didn't take that much time, but now there's more fear going on.Now. Finally, they're actually able to go on little walks without a dog. They can go more than 10 meters away from their house now, but only for a few hours, like for an hour or two a day, you know, that's it. And that's going to get better. But guys, the thing that's in a danger or country is not a virus. It's not about whether or not you're going outside with a mask or not. That's not what's in trouble right now. The true thing that's the trouble is SCARCITY. As I said, scarcity drives away money. It drives away resource. It drives away happiness, joy. It drives away people. That scarcity is a disease. That is a virus that keeps coming back. And it has been since the beginning of time. That is something that's destroying much, much more. It's destroying governments. It's destroying jobs. It's destroying people.People are giving into scarcity. There's more people dying here in the state of Utah from suicides. Of the increased number of suicides and our deaths from a virus, right? There's way more deaths from that. From drug overdoses and things of that nature. Guys, the real thing that kills us, the real scare here is OUR MINDS. You know, and I'll tell you, there's two primary things with scarcity that I'm worried about. One is a concept called learned helplessness. Now I remember taking my psychology classes in college and maybe you guys did too, is that they did a study. They said, all right, we're going to take a dog. Right. And this is back before, before we had PETA, right? This is back before those days when they protected animals, but they took a dog and they had a floor and there was a little separation between the two floors, right?So one side they could have electrified. So they had like a little kind of cage that they could electrify the floor. On the other side of this little mini wall, is this like a short little wall that you could hop over. There's another side of that electrocute as well. So of course they won't, just like with Pavlov's experiment with ringing the bell, they said, Hey, let's see what happens if we shocked the floor. So they shock floor in the dog. And naturally the dog jumps over to the other side to get relief. It wants to avoid the pain. They said, all right, we'll shock. The other side. He was shocked the other side and jumped right back over. They said, look at this, we're manipulating a dog. Look, what a bunch of chipped bullies.So anyways, they started doing this and then they said, Hey, let's test this out. What would happen if we shock both sides at the same time? So kind of the "Dang if you do, Dang if you don't" that scenario. Right? So they shocked both sides. The dog hops over realized that shocked over. It hops back over again, hops back, back and forth a few times. And after realizes that no matter where it goes, it's going to be shocked. It went to a corner and it started penal over itself. It got to a point where it said, why should I keep jumping? And so it stopped. And it just sat there shivering, right? Obviously this is really cruel treatment. It makes you feel for the dog obviously, or the dogs. They probably I'm sure they did some more than one. So anyways, that concept that came out of that was called learned helplessness, which comes from the whole "Dang if you do, Dang if you don't" right? I'm editing this to keep this PG.But that's true. What it truly is, is it's trying to say that many cases, we think if there's no hope, right? There's no way out, many guys might feel this way about your own money. Anyways, some of you guys might be thinking, Hey, I just started going ahead. And then all this crap hits the fan and now I'm right back in a struggle. Right? And I get that, you know, some of you thinking like, Oh, I was just about to retire and then bam! There went my stocks, you know, they're on my mutual funds. Right? And all that kind of stuff.That's the kind of thing we're talking about with learned helplessness is that when people start to believe that no matter what they do, when no matter what choice they make, they're doomed. That they're doomed to a life of misery or the doom to a life of lack. You know, lack of money, lack of joy, lack of time, whatever that might be. That is what I mean by learn helplessness. That right there guys, there's a lot of that happening right now. People think, Oh, we just came out of recession, you know, over a decade ago, now we're going into another one, possibly even a depression. What's the use, right? And when people get depressed, they start doing crazy things. We've already seen this, right. We've already seen some craziness happen. I mean, you know, you're hearing stories about people clapping for their balconies when people get arrested on the streets because they want out, you know, we get that. I get why you'd feel that way, you know? But we start to realize that, you know, when you get into a weird place, especially when it's a place of scarcity, when you're feel like there's a scarce amount of freedom, right? There's a scarce amount of time or scarce amount of resources or whatever it might be. Scarce amount of air to breathe, right? Whatever that might be like, that's where you start to have issues. And that's when you start to make really bad decisions.Guys, I was this way, even just in the last recession, I was thinking like, man, no matter what I'm doing, it used to be. I thought, whatever I touched turned to gold. But then when I got humbled. By the other circumstances, I started thinking, man, no matter what I do, it seems like I'm failing. And that's a bad, deep, dark place to be in. Like, I remember just being in that place thinking, Oh my goodness, how am I going to get out of this mess? Right. And that's a hard place to be. So be aware of that. The other one I would be aware of now is also entitlement.Entitlement is very much a scarcity driven type of emotion and belief even, right? We're already seeing this right now. Like there's a family member that recently absolutely despises government money. And so he got a stimulus check, right? You know, I wasn't fortunate to get a stimulus check, but that's fine. You know, but he got a stimulus check and he's like, Oh! I hate that. They sent me this check. And then when he was asked, are you going to give it back to the government? He's like, Oh no, no, I'm going to spend it. And there's a lot of people thinking that somehow the government should bill them out. Like they are somehow responsible for the freedom or have even the key to their freedom. And so they start thinking they're entitled to it. Hey, you know what? I'm entitled that somebody should pay my rent for me because I didn't do this.This isn't my fault. Guys, life happens. You're not entitled to squat. You don't deserve anything. The only thing you deserve is to align yourself with principles, follow them and then accept the consequence. Good or bad. So for example, you know, like I know that if I create value for people inevitably prosperity follows, you know, and it's not just money, you know, sometimes it's appreciation sometimes it's love, you know, other times it's just, you know, the fact that the joy that I have, that I know I'm blessing lives, that personal fulfillment, right? There's lots of ways you can get paid from creating value. That is true principle. And always has been, always, will be since the beginning of time and will be till the end of time, right? Those kinds of things are true. I'm not entitled to anything. I just create as much karma as I can in my favor.And then I let the principals govern and the consequences follow. That's all it is guys. It's purely just about that. It's how we let those consequences follow, doing good, doing, you know, following your line, yourselves, the principles. When I violate principles, especially if it's consistent, I will get a result. The results usually not prosperity. It's usually in becoming impoverished. You know, that's the thing. And that's why you always got to check yourself with the emotions and the belief that you have. Guys. You're not entitled to give them money. In fact, the one thing I'm worried about is that when people start becoming entitled to that money, then they believe that somehow people got bailed them out and they stop producing. They stop being creators. They start becoming consumers and creators are what drives this economy. You want anything to be resolved? If you want true prosperity for a whole society, we've got to go from a place of consumerism, to a place of being a creator. We gotta be in a creative mindset. Otherwise it doesn't work.So guys, that's my thing. I want you guys to really take this in depth. Avoid the entitlement, avoid feeling helpless because there always is hope. I am telling you guys there's many of us prospering right now. Not because we're just got lucky, but because we follow and align ourselves with principles. You do that. You become a master and a student of those principles. And many of these episodes in the show talk about many of them. If you do that prosperity will inevitably follow, one way or the other. And I remember it happened to me in 2009, August, 2009. I remember I released myself. I said, God, I submit myself to you. I know that I've been going through this for the last year and a half the struggle. Right? Really. It felt like the last two years I was going through that struggle of scarcity.And I finally just said, listen, I know these principles work. They're from you. I'll just follow them. I don't care if it takes 20 years, I will keep following these principles so that I know they have to work. And you know what happened, guys? It was after I got to that place of submission, that place where I was able to just say, you know what, I'm okay. I'm going to keep doing what I know is right. And let the consequence follow. That is exactly when by October, just two months later, that's when everything turned around for me and I started to pull myself out of that hole. Guys, these things work get to a place of hope, get to a place of abundance and prosperity and watch what will happen. Your life will be drastically different than the lives of those out there. And around you in the world today, if the world could just hold onto this and truly grasp this. Guys, most of these problems that are in the media right now, the media wouldn't have that much to report. They would just come up with crap, which they already do anyways. But guys give them something new to report on. Do and be something better. That is my challenge for you guys today. I hope we make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We'll see you later.

[bitchylittlepsycho69]

entry #1  - Him

Content Warning: suicide, depression and self harm. If you're sensitive to these topics, and you aren't a total masochist about it, maybe you should avoid reading this one.

this is my first entry.

 I want to know if other people feel the same way.  

         is it bad that he still says “kill yourself, look for a reason to” even if I turned a corner, stayed sober, stopped cutting, or had absolutely no reason to feel that way? It’s been since I was 10 that I felt the need to cut, the little voice inside my head saying do it, it’s worth it, you will be at peace, unfortunately I am not as selfish as I thought  and I think of my mom every single fucking time... I don’t really no what reason I had to cut myself at that age, but all I remember was the first time he appeared. the little voice inside my ear. Him.

   I wasn’t really a enjoyable person to be around growing up, always had problems with friends or my weight or just being able to communicate with people in a certain way, my mom used to say I was just quiet, but honestly I was being consoled by that stupid voice in my head

 ‘LIE, CUT, DON’T EAT, YOU WILL FEEL BETTER LISTEN TO ME JOANNE’.

 I don’t know why... but his voice sounded so soothing until you stop listening to him. then he gets violent and aggressive.  

 ‘MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE WORTHLESS AND YOU NEVER FUCKING LISTEN JOANNE

 ugh shut up guy.  

 After I went into high school. He broke loose. I was my own demon for a while, I started getting into things I never did in my life, (drinking smoking snorting fighting getting arrested the whole shebang) but it’s not like I wasn’t enjoying it. I would drink or do drugs with my new friends to forget about what I’ve been through. like turning over a new leaf. but that was toxic. and on a daily basis I would drink smoke cut repeat. day after day it was like an addiction for pain and forgetfulness. After grade 9 summer 2012, he came back. stronger. he knew every weakness of mine, I am him, he is me. he knows everything now. just when I thought he was gone. he came right back.

  I got expelled. sent a girl to the hospital, was arrested, charged. you know it. after that I was sent to counseling but still didn’t go so, I breached my probation, twice. all I remember is that giggle that me and him would do when we would get in trouble do something ridiculous like spray paint the water tower or steal from tip jars and from grocery stores, just stupid shit. I loved the attention and so did he. but he knew my future. and at that time, I didn't. he was up to something. but 16-year-old Joanne, was fucking clueless.

 years are passing by same old shit just a different day and my life got boring so demon left for a while, I stopped cutting got into habits like working ffs. my demon left for a while when it was 2015, when I first met the love of my life, knowing I’m manipulative I did everything in my power to keep him around, sometimes healthy, most of the time not. but eventually that relationship came to came to an end and we lost contact.  but HE came back. angry. and violent, and ready to play. I grabbed whatever drug I had in my cabinet, took it all. drank until I woke up in the middle of a park on the opposite side of the city when I was just drinking by myself at home, got a 15000 loan and spent it on blow Xanax bottles and cases of liquor, I paid last 3 months rent so I could pretty much trash it for 3 months then find another dump to live in. I drank and drove everywhere sometimes I was black out and still was lucky to make it home. but I didn’t care. I’m ready to die. he knows it, and I know it. and on that day in June 1, 2018 we agreed with each other for the first time. he knew everything now to get rid of me. he knew the alcohol would stay he knew I wouldn’t stop he knows I wouldn’t get help.

 ‘Now its time Joanne. now there’s nothing more you have left, you’re 20k in debt, your family hates you your friends tolerate because you have the money, you had the stuff, but where is everybody now? you were meant to die alone. Just fucking do it’

 “Okay”

 After that somebody called the cops on me, they showed up and I was there puking and passed out, only I didnt have any cuts on my arm, pills and cocaine were scattered and mixed together vodka was all over me and I had bleach; unopened, thankfully. Now if that wasn’t rock bottom. Then there is definitely a lot more to come... because I’m still falling.

 got on medication, trazodone mostly, some anti depressants, but I wasn’t allowed to have to many, because I am a substance abuser. I could hear him mocking me from the distant “fucking pussy”. He would say it to make me drink to taunt and every time that happened, I would drink and drive, and guess who has a DUI now. After the meds started kicking in, he fucked off. But I stopped taking my meds right after. Is it bad that I missed him?

 He left and I didn’t hear from him until September 2019. But that’s another story. Thanks for reading.

  my depression will always find a way back. there is no escaping my life. but at least I’m not alone, I have him. he will always be there when you fall, to cradle you in your darkest times, to eagerly make you want  feel the endorphins breaking through your wrist, that feeling you’ve been thriving for, the art painted with a blade that you found in your dads tool box, the tears that you shed of every minute of everyday, the things you go through. he will be right where he needs to be. With you. Always.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If any of you are going through something and need to talk to somebody or if somebody you know is going through something there are many support services that are here to help.  

IN CANADA:

Canadian Suicide Prevention Service (CSPS): French or English: toll-free 1-833-456-4566 Available 24/7

 Kids Help Phone is Canada’s only 24/7, national support service. We offer professional counselling, information and referrals and volunteer-led, text-based support to young people in both English and French.Whether by phone, text, mobile app or through our website, you can connect with us whenever you want, however you want. KIDS HELP PHONE (20 years or youngers): 1-800-668-6868 (Online or on the Phone)

UNITED STATES:

United States Suicide Prevention Lifelines are available 24/7 Call National Hope Helpline at 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) or in Spanish, 1-888-628-9454.

Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), maintains a mental health services locator, which you can use to help find services, facilities and resources in your state. 

[sorcierarchy]

Really sick and tired of people who act like those of us dealing with mental illnesses can’t advocate for ourselves or have opinions that matter about our own health or experiences. People are so uneducated about mental illness that they seem to think that the second you sit down in a doctor’s office, you won’t have anymore symptoms and everything is just peachy from that point forward. 

Even if you are on medication, symptoms still continue. It’s not only wrong, but downright harmful to set the expectation that mental illness stops the moment you get a prescription. 

I have been diagnosed with BPD for going on 12 years now. I’ve been on medications for only half of that, because guess what? Medication doesn’t always work, especially not alone. I didn’t have the option for a regular follow-up with a psychologist, and even if I had that kind of thing takes MONTHS if not years of work. 

Out of the 6 years I’ve been on medication for, I’ve only just in the past year found one that actually works well for me and doesn’t give me terrible side-effects, and that’s only treating the depression and anxiety symptoms. The medication I’m on didn’t even exist when I first was diagnosed, and since it’s not covered by the health plan here its price would be prohibitively expensive if my doctor hadn’t managed to get me on a government program to fund it (otherwise it’s $300/month, which I can’t afford). It’s the fifth med I’ve tried, and it takes time on each medication to figure out if it’s even working and sometimes side-effects don’t show up until months later and then you have to start from scratch. The gov-program I’m on now only lasts a year, and when I asked my doc what my options are after the year is up she said “we just have to hope it’s covered by then”. 

That’s not even talking about psychotic symptoms. Anyone who has been on anti-psychotics can tell you that it can be absolute fucking hell. They completely ruined any quality of life I had to the point I decided I would rather deal with the symptoms than deal with the medications, not to mention that they were once again prohibitively expensive and the only reason I was able to be on them for as long as I was was because my doctor was stocking me up on free samples. 

Some people are really lucky and do really well on meds, take to them right away and have little to no side-effects and are able to use the cheapest drug on the market. My mom took to the first antidepressant she tried, had zero side-effects, and it’s covered by the provincial health plan so all she pays is the monthly out of pocket which is very affordable for her as someone with a full time job, but even her situation isn’t perfect. You don’t go from depressed to cured, you still have to learn to deal with the ups and downs and emotional regulation and all kinds of things that you have just never been equipped to deal with. 

And that’s just for the people who have a diagnosis. I’m extremely lucky to be in Canada and that I was able to even get crisis mental health care when I needed it, as inadequate as it was, it did save my life. If I had been living in the US at the time, I’d be dead. It’s that simple. I absolutely would not have been able to go to a hospital or have ongoing treatment for any amount of time. YES see a professional when and if you can, that’s super fucking important, but just because that’s the first and most important step doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a backup plan for when people DON’T HAVE THAT OPTION. 

People experiencing the symptoms of mental illness, diagnosed or not, NEED to have accessibility to tools so they can have something to work with. We NEED to have a plan and some kind of hint at what to do in crisis situations. We NEED to advocate for ourselves, and we NEED to have backup plans for when ideal treatment routes aren’t available. I’m not the first person to say this. There are groups everywhere of people dealing with exactly these types of situations that are advocating for information to be more readily available, but we need to be taken seriously and not told that we’re best to just “see a professional” whenever we try to speak. It’s extremely fucked up and ableist that our voices are immediately dismissed the moment it comes to speaking up about our own mental health and our own experiences, every time we try to help each other out by posting information that may benefit our peers. Stop going around to people you don’t know on a topics that don’t effect you just to shut them down with your bullshit opinion. Having a MH or knowing someone with a MH does not give you the experience to speak over people discussing a specific symptom that you do not have. 

[kootenaygoon]

So,

We were supposed to be having sushi.

Paisley’s mother was in Nelson for a visit, and we’d strolled down to Baker Street on a breezy summer evening in June 2015 to find a whole section of Ward cordoned off. Firefighters were congregating around a nearby alley, behind Touchstones Museum, and police cruisers were strategically parked to block traffic at either end of the block. On the opposite side of the street was a small crowd of gawkers standing outside the Hume Hotel. I’d just gotten off work, and I’d been looking forward to sushi all day, but there was no way I could keep walking and pretend I hadn’t seen this.

“You guys get started, I just need to figure out what’s going on, okay? It’ll take me like 20 minutes, tops. This could actually be a big story for the Friday edition,” I said, giving Paisley a quick kiss. 

“I’ll be there before you’re even finished your miso soup.”

When I got down to the corner I shook hands with Josh Hoffman, one of the local radio reporters. I asked him what was going on and he explained that some guy had terrorized his girlfriend, torn apart her apartment and was now throwing shit out the window into the alley. She had successfully extricated herself, thankfully, but now he was menacing the cops with a cleaver and threatening to throw himself out the fifth-storey window. Josh pulled out his camera and showed me the photos he’d taken, the last time the dude poked his head out. There was blood running down his chin, his eyes were wild, and he looked like a horror movie villain. He was also approximately my age, a regular-looking blonde guy in his early 30s. If the universe was sending me signs, then this one was was a little on the nose. 

“He was laughing and pointing at people, man. Like the Joker or something,” Josh said. “Creepy shit.”

I thanked Josh and jogged across town to the Nelson Star office to retrieve my camera, taking a moment to screw on my zoom lens, then called Greg on my cell while I power-walked back to the scene. Up until this point the Star had published multiple stories about the mental health crisis, as the NPD continued to call it, but I hadn’t been able to write about a specific example. This was my chance to illustrate what Wayne Holland had told me about, to make people see the immediacy and urgency of the issue. That being said, I knew Paisley would be pissed if I didn’t get back to dinner quickly. Her Mom had flown all the way from Nova Scotia to see us and so far I’d been busy nearly every day with work. It didn’t matter if this random dude was about to commit very public suicide, because I couldn’t change the outcome one way or the other. I imagined her sitting there with the menu, wishing I could just call the cops in the morning. But I was too addicted to the rush, the drama, the adrenaline of a breaking story. 

I’d never felt better suited to a task.

“So they have him barricaded in the room, and he’s completely in the dark because they cut off power to the whole building,” I told Greg, recounting what I’d heard from Josh. 

“They’ve got negotiators there now, trying to talk him down. They know he has that meat cleaver but they don’t know what else he might have.”

“And when did this all start?”

“I think it’s been about four hours now. Like it started with this big domestic dispute and then this dude just lost his shit. Word is he’s violating a court order.”

“Well, let’s hope he doesn’t jump.”

As I neared the spot again, I reflected on how this darkness could exist amidst such incredible beauty. Elephant Mountain remained omnipresent to my right, it’s trees glowing in the late evening sun. There were faded phantom signs on the heritage buildings and people were noisily enjoying patio time with a view that stretched out to the Big Orange Bridge. Beers clinked. Around town there were a number of mural projects going on, and my favourite was a collaborative art wall that changed every few months. Its latest iteration was a cyborg lobster that was harvesting bunnies to turn into slippers. It had been created by an artist named Coleman Webb, along with help from others, and I used it as a cover photo for the Star one week. To me it illustrated the rollicking chaos of the Kootenays, with bright vivid colours, but it also hinted at some of its shadowy elements too. Who could save us from the lobster menace? All around us were people that were taking things too far, that were getting lost in the intellectual jungles of drug addiction and mental illness. And who was there to catch these people, when they careened off the deep end? Who was going to intervene?

“Has he poked his head out again?” I asked Josh.

“Yeah, he’s putting on a real show now. I think he likes the attention. He keeps yelling at us, but I can’t hear him.”

“What’re the cops doing? Did they set up mats under his window or something?”

“It looks like they’re taking the firetruck ladder. I don’t know if they’re going to rush the place or what.”

I spotted Fire Chief Len MacCharles, who had also been at Ryan Tapp’s death scene. This was turning out to be a grim gig for him. He shouted orders, pointing and gesturing. It was just starting to get dark, and the red brake lights gave everything a hellish glow. I found a good angle on the balcony of the Hume, and my shutter clicked multiple times as the guy re-emerged swaying, his arms locked on the windowsill. Blood dripped from his chin to his chest, leaving little crimson spots below his collarbone. His eyes rolled around in his head, then suddenly they focused. He shouted wildly. His eyes scanned the alley past the firefighters and down to the small crowd in front of where I was situated. Then he saw me, with the camera, and grinned. He lifted his shaky arm and pointed right at me. He was on the other side of the lens, but I still felt his gaze. Goosebumps erupted down my arms.

“It was like he was trying to tell me something, like he was coming back from the future to warn me,” I told Paisley later that night, while we walked the dogs around the school playground.

“It was like he was saying: you next.”

Paisley scoffed. “Don’t say that. That’s ridiculous.”

We were sneaking a joint before going to bed, which was breaking the promise we’d made to each other that we wouldn’t smoke while her mother was in town. I loved Paisley’s mother, and trusted her deeply, but the flip-side of that was that she always knew more about my life and my secrets than I was comfortable with. She was a tough, ultra-discerning nurse who was intent on providing the best life possible for her daughter, and that meant making sure she regularly participated in boyfriend maintenance. She schooled me on how to properly act as a partner, correcting any missteps or faux pas. She’d held our hands through multiple near-breakups, acting as a mediator. Whenever she visited she bought us groceries, took us shopping for housing decorations, and sat delighted in the passenger seat while we took road trips into the countryside. The one down-side was her fervent anti-pot attitude, which necessitated covert moments such as these.

We stood in the moonlight while Muppet and Buster ran laps of the field, bounding along in pace with each other. One light, the other dark. Smoke tendrils rose towards the buzzing security light, then up into the darkness.

“So what happened with the guy, then? How did it all end?” Paisley asked, taking a toke.

“He took a run for the window and jumped right out, but somehow I guess he ended up hanging by his fingertips from the window frame. So the cops rushed the room and they grabbed him while he was dangling there. They were able to drag him back inside.”

She passed me the joint. “By his fingers? Holy shit.”

The Kootenay Goon

[the-cardboard-constructionist]

Some thoughts on high school, serial killers, and addiction:

Warning: this post contains mentions of dead bodies, rape, and general serial killer things. It is also approximately 5k long and is like 50% a discussion on Dahmer and 50% a discussion of my own personal inner demons so like read at your own risk? also contains entitled white guys 

Over the weekend, I went back home to visit an old friend, and she was telling me about the book My Friend Dahmer, and since she conveniently had it there, I went ahead and read it. It was a very interesting read, and I must admit, I did not know nearly enough about Jeffrey Dahmer before, even though I probably should have. (We also read his entire wikipedia, and let me tell you those two cops who were in his apartment with the dead body, and did not notice it are the two most incompetent police officers in the whole damn world and I just can’t believe they got their jobs back.) 

But then we got to talking about the idea of whether or not he could have been saved. The author of the book seems to think that until the moment he killed his first victim (the hitchhiker), there was still a chance for him. A chance to not be a serial killer (but probably not a chance to be a normal and happy person). My friend thought that this was not the case. That maybe there had been a chance when he was younger, before he started to fantasize about the idea of having sex with a body that was unable to move (and yes, that phrasing is intentional). But once it got to the point where the fantasies were haunting him, there was no hope. 

I disagree further. I think there was always a chance for him to change, but not all that high of a likelihood, not due to any inherent qualities he possessed but due to the combination of who he was, and the world around him. I think that the chance grew smaller and smaller as time went on, but until he started his second set of murders (as in, his second documented murder, not the hitchhiker), there was still a chance. 

He had a goal. He had something he craved, and he very obviously, did not want to kill people. I know that sounds very silly to say, given that he is a serial killer with 17 claimed bodies to his name, but if you look at the details of his murders you can see that death was not what he was aiming for. He was a sick, sick man who did absolutely horrible things, but he’s a very interesting case because he went through extreme lengths to try to prevent his victims from dying. Now granted, this was mostly so that he could rape them while they were unconscious which tbh was his goal. But he didn’t want to kill them. And he did express guilt over it at some point. Which is interesting. 

I personally believe that he was suffering from several different mental illnesses, and at least one personality disorder (I’m more inclined to go with Borderline over Antisocial, but he does fit the criteria for either one. I’m also inclined to believe that at the end of the day, Borderline and Antisocial are just two expressions for a very very similar thing, depending on the socialization of the person involved. Which is a topic for another day.) I also believe that for both BPD and Anti-Social, it is absolutely something that can be treated far more than many people in the field accept. Most accept treatments for BPD, but much less so for Anti-Social. At least, once it develops from Conduct Disorder to Anti-Social. I believe that it is treatable, most of the time. It just requires the right methods and the tools, and I don’t have all those tools yet, I’m in the process of doing as much research as I can into the subject. It’s a personal project I have, in the hopes of helping a child who is close to me. But I think that with the right intervention, the right support, the right tools to be able to deal with his fantasies and the ability to cope with what they were, and what that meant for him, he could have led a more functional life where he didn’t you know, kill and rape men. I don’t think it could have happened in his situation, but if it had been in another time, another place, I think it could have been prevented. Unfortunately, so many people around him didn’t seem to notice what was going around when it should have been so so obvious. 

The book discusses his childhood, and the perceptions of him by his friends. Or rather, his classmates, because most of them weren’t really his friends. They were his school friends. The people he sometimes spent time with at school, but wasn’t invited to hang out with outside of school. And they noticed something was off. They noticed the awkward manner, but dismissed it. Which is fair. Every high school has a few creepy kids, and from what I gather, he wasn’t even the creepiest one there. They noticed the drinking, when it came to that. 

But his teachers? When they were asked years later, they noticed nothing. They didn’t notice that he was literally drunk all the time for his entire senior year. Not even when he sat in class and smelled of alcohol. Now sure, some of that may be self preservation on their part. Who wants to be the adult to admit they noticed something was off, but didn’t do anything about it? Because that was the time when intervention would have been great. But also... Honestly, I think a lot of them didn’t notice. There were many of them that could have reached out to him, to find out what was going on with his home life because obviously something was wrong. And that responsibility is not on the other kids, because they’re kids. It’s not their job to prevent their creepy sort-of friend from being drunk all the time. 

And this is a trend that continues for his whole life. In the army, his drinking was a problem enough that they discharged him from the army. But the fact that he was raping people wasn’t. 

In fact, I must say, there were a lot of overlooked rapes before he finally killed someone. Like a lot. He got fines for it, and minor jail time many many times, but was ultimately let go each time. Like, it was a clear behavioral pattern. He was on the sex offender registry. He very often admitted to his crimes. His first story was usually the truth. But they often willfully chose to believe the lies that came second. 

And those two cops that gave him back the child he had kidnapped and drugged after telling the two women who reported the boy’s story to them to shut up, and then went up to the apartment where the dead body was and didn’t notice. 

There was a lot of looking the other way. A lot of times he could have been stopped before he really started (and I know he had started 9 years earlier with the hitch hiker, but I honestly think that was pure impulse and he didn’t entirely mean to do it. It didn’t keep the whole thing going).

And given what we hear from his classmates about noticing that he was weird, even before the drinking. That he wasn’t normal, like the rest of them. (Although admittedly, that one other creep was pretty creepy as well.) But I think there are so many missed chances to prevent the whole damn thing. 

So we got to talking. Did we have a kid in our high school that if someone told us one of our classmate had become a serial killer, that we would jump to right away? At first, we couldn’t think of anyone. (and to be fair, the author of the book didn’t actually guess Dahmer right away, he guessed the other creep first). 

So we got out the year book, and we spent several hours deliberating on this. As we often do for things of this nature. And we came to several conclusions. The most obvious one (which I do admit, took us awhile to come to), was of course the three boy that had plotted to blow up the high school in our freshman year. I didn’t know any of them personally, as two of them were older than us, and well, there were 853 kids in our class and it was only a few months into the school year so I didn’t know the one that was in our class. However, school shootings/attacks are quite different from serial murder. It did make us think though about the stories we heard after the attack was discovered and prevented (they were planning for 3 years into the future, and were dumbasses that made a Myspace page about it), about things people had heard them say. Things that were funny at the time, but creepy in retrospect. Like the time one of them had been fooling around in class with other kids, and when someone hit him with something (I don’t know what, I heard this story like third hand), he turned around and stabbed them with it. (The kid was okay, it wasn’t something very sharp.) Then laughed it off. 

The second obvious answer was the actual literal serial killer who had been employed at our school. He had been a janitor there, but that was years before we went to the school. He killed many prostitutes and much like Dahmer, kept the bodies in his house. I’ve been informed by the world’s dumbest health teacher that he was a very nice person. But we dismissed him because he didn’t answer the actual question, he just happened to be a serial killer in the area. But we never knew him. That was years before we went there. 

Then we came to an impasse. Kids we actually knew. Kids who weren’t kicked out three months into freshman year. And we came to several different potentials. 

1) A boy in my history class who always seemed to have his hands down his pants every single fucking time I looked over, he wasn’t the brightest of kids and his handwriting was awful, but tbh, I don’t know much else about him Probably hasn’t killed anyone. No idea what he’s doing now. But creepy just the same. 

2) a boy who I will call M, who I didn’t know all that well, but my friend did. He’s an interesting person, who forms weird social connections, but not well. At some point after graduation, he made friends with my step-mom which was weird as fuck, but I am relatively sure he hasn’t killed anyone, and probably won’t. But he does give off a weird vibe, and if someone told me he had killed someone, I don’t think I’d be shocked. 

and lastly, 3) My friend, who I will call P for the purposes of this. (I’d like to state right now that I don’t actually think P is a serial killer, and I am relatively sure that he hasn’t killed anyone. It’s just a behavior set I could see developing into him, and warning signs that exist.) I didn’t entirely notice it at the time, but I don’t think he actually had any friends other than me. And tbh, I’ll be friends with literally everyone so I don’t really count there (except that I do). There were a few people he seemed like superficial friends with, but I got the vibe they didn’t really like him. Which is fair. He was absolutely annoying, and like the picture of a nerdy white entitled male who also happens to be socially awkward. He was a writer, which is largely why I was friends with him. We would write together, and discuss stories. His were always about a girl, who I’ll call A for the purposes of this. She was a real girl, who went to our school, although I’ve never met her and honestly I don’t even know her last name to look her up. I don’t think I want to, at this point. He had a crush on her, and he’d written her a poem which I’m sure he intended to come off as sweet, but he’s socially awkward and had never talked to her before, and from what I know she isn’t the world’s politest person, and well... she thought it was creepy. And told him so. And then reported him to the administration, who probably didn’t need to be involved. So he was bitter. He was so fucking bitter. He had decided that all cheerleaders were evil because this one girl thought he was creepy (Being me, I spent many hours in vain trying to convince him otherwise because Paula Abdul was a cheerleader and obviously, she isn’t evil. He didn’t really care). His stories were filled with it. And they always involved her. Usually in a relationship that grew from annoyance and dislike to something far more romantic. They weren’t well written stories, which is what I fixated on at the time. They were not at all well written, and they were weird and creepy and there were just so many of them. The incident had happened at least a year earlier, and the girl was no longer in any of his classes, and still in the year I was friends with him, he wrote at least four novel length stories about her. (Although to be fair, at some point, they stopped really being about her, they became about a fictionalized version of her, which isn’t entirely less creepy.) He had never had a real girlfriend, or even a not-real one, and spent most of his non-writing time complaining about this fact. It was annoying. Really annoying. But tbh, my senior year was filled with entitled nerds whining at me that they had no girlfriends to the point where I point blank asked all of them: “All you ever talk about is wanting a girlfriend. What the fuck are you going to talk to her about when you get one?” P never gave me a good answer to that. As far as I know, he still hasn’t had a girlfriend, but I haven’t talked to him much after graduation. 

Now, most of our friendship was talk of writing, and me arguing with him about things like cheerleaders being evil, even though I knew it was entirely in vain. But not all of it was. Just being an entitled white boy doesn’t make you serial killer material. But stalking behaviors contribute much to that. And boy, oh boy, did he have them. And I’m sorry to say that I think I made that problem far worse than it would have been otherwise. There was this teacher at my school, and if anyone is actually reading this far into my post, you may have heard me refer to her before. Especially if you were here in the early days of my blogs. The Demon. Long story short, she taught English, was absolutely adorable, and I was convinced for a brief while that she was actually the demon from Paranormal Activity, because goddam, they’ve got the sam damn name, age, and face. I’d like to state for the record right here and now that my English teacher was not actually a demon, and she is a very nice lady and does in no way deserve her place in this story. But if P was obsessed with A, I was obsessed with the demon (I’m not giving away her name on the internet, so we’re just calling her the demon for this). It was bad. It was really bad. It was a different sort of obsession that his obsession with A, though. It was not one that came from a place of entitlement. He thought he was entitled to a girlfriend, entitled to a girl who wouldn’t call him creepy. I in no way believed that I was at all entitled to the demon. She was a human being with her own life, and I was not to be a part of it. But that didn’t mean the thoughts weren’t there. And it didn’t mean the actions weren’t either. It was never anything that would be harmful to her, because I would never want to do that. But I wrote far more stories about her than he ever wrote about A. I wrote stories of her being a demon and eating students. I wrote stories of her not being a demon and doing many inappropriate things with other teachers. I wrote stories about her and a young student (hello self insert 15 year old me). I wrote so many different ones. SO MANY. Hell, I turned a story about her in for a grade (and perhaps my Creative Writing teacher should have been concerned about that). I failed a math class because I was busy staring across the hallway into her classroom, and watching her. I organized my route to class so that it would go by her classroom the most amount of times possible, to chance a glimpse. I wrote several novels devoted entirely to her, to different potentials of her. I spent most Tuesdays after school sitting outside of her classroom, with P, pretending we were doing things for our writing club that was right across the hall (I mean, we were also doing that), and I involved P in it. He was a part of all of this, and a very willing part. There have been times where I convinced myself that perhaps I made him do it all, but I honestly don’t think I did. I think he wanted to be a part of it. He enjoyed passing notes to me in the hall, with what she had been wearing that day scribbled down. He enjoyed the fact that we kept track of her every move, looking for signs that she was actually there to snap people’s necks and steal their babies (whoops, spoilers for Paranormal Activity 2, hope you’ve all seen it by now). And maybe that was our surface reason, but it wasn’t the only reason. Objectively, she was hot. Everyone agreed that she was hot. Even the gay guys agreed that she was hot. Is still hot. I thought she was incredibly attractive, and after awhile, it stopped being about demon things. I doubt it was ever about the demon part for P. But it got to the level where it was entirely out of control. I did many things I regret (again, nothing that actually involved her in any way. I very intentionally kept it all away from her.), and I lost people I really fucking loved over it. I lost people that I wish I hadn’t lost, but I didn’t see why it was wrong then. Because we weren’t doing anything to hurt her (other than entirely invade her privacy). I was caught up in the whole thing, and it took losing one of the most important people to me to get me to stop it. And even then... it was slow going. It was like I was caught up in the whole thing and I just... couldn’t stop. Not even when I wanted to. P didn’t help. He saw nothing wrong with it, and he had no one to lose over it, so what was one more of my ex’s that thought he was creepy? He didn’t care. He still passed me notes, and told me what she was wearing, and when he found out something new about her. And even in the grip of losing something so important to me, I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop myself, but I couldn’t. It shouldn’t have been like that. But it took actual effort to reroute myself so that I didn’t go by her classroom. To stop scribbling in the margins what she was doing when I saw her. What she was wearing. Who she was talking to. What song she was singing under her breath. 

There was one day, maybe a month after I lost everything, that I realized I was never going to be able to actually move on if I didn’t stop cold turkey. And I did. For awhile. I hate to say it was all for a date with a cute girl that never even happened. And it just kept sneaking back. Hell, it has literally been 8 years since I developed that obsession, and honestly, it’s still here. It’s on a back burner, and I make a conscious effort to keep it away, but it’s still here. Hell, I ended up spending most of last year writing about it even. 

And so I got to thinking, if I say that P is creepy and entirely likely to become a serial killer because of behaviors that he showed in high school, what the hell does that say about me?

Am I any better just because I have no sense of entitlement? 

Now of course, I am in no way a serial killer, and I have no desire to kill anyone, and I’m not just saying that or anything lol. I don’t like hurting people. 

But all the things that made him a good candidate, make me one just the same. Creepy obsessions that turned into writing. Sexual writing. Overlapping into other areas of my life. Stalking behaviors. I knew everything about her. Still do. Hell, I still have her fucking license plate memorized, and it’s not going away no matter how many times I try to forget it. And not only that, I have something I don’t remember ever seeing in him, I have violence. I spend a lot of time and effort making sure it does not show it’s head anymore, but when I was a kid I was so impulsively violent all the time. I almost clawed my best friend’s eyes out once, because she didn’t want to watch me dance (it was very fucking stupid, and I was like 8). I didn’t understand a lot empathy as a child, it had to be taught to me. And it was very successfully taught to me. I am now empathetic to a fault. Which is why I always end up being friends to creeps like P, because I get where he’s coming from. And I didn’t realize how much of a problem entitled white nerds were back in high school. To me, then, they were just friends. 

But the more I think about it, the more I think the one out of our high school class that showed the most warning signs for a thing like this... was me. Stalking behavior. Obsessions. Impulsivity. A history of violence. An abnormal relationship with the concept of empathy. The inability to realize how my actions could effect people. A lack of knowledge about when is and isn’t the time to turn in stories that are honestly just porn very clearly about my teachers (spoilers: it is literally never the right time, why the hell did I do that?). A technically broke home (but really, it was the best case senerio out of a divorce). A history of diagnosed mental illnesses and behavioral problems at school to the point where I was actually kicked out of kindergarten. 

But the thing is... I didn’t have those things all at once. But I can see the path now. If my parents weren’t as amazing as they were, and hadn’t been able to afford to, and be willing to get me the treatment and care I needed when I got kicked out of kindergarten, my life would be different. They sent me to a residential program at Yale, and got me stabilized on meds that I am still on today, mostly for ADHD. They worked with me, got me a therapist and a psyciatrist. They fought the school to get me any resources I need. They taught me how to not only resist impulses, but to not have them at all. Or rather, to channel them into helpful impulses. To the point where by the time I was in high school, and the whole obsession started, I was barely symptomatic for my ADHD at all. I was still violent, but not at the level of clawing out anyone’s eyeballs. Just far too many playful punches, far too often. 

But if they hadn’t? If those symptoms had festered, and my parents hadn’t been able to get me into such a good program and on a stable set of meds, where would I be? If I had still be having those sort of impulses when the obsession started? If life hadn’t worked out just perfectly for me... would I have been that kind of person? Would I be that kid? Would I be the kid voted most likely to be a serial killer? Probably. Hell, would I have gotten to the part where I could have killed someone? I can see a path forming for that. I wouldn’t have done it on purpose, of course, but honestly, I don’t think Jeffery Dahmer meant to kill his first victim either. 

(Again, not saying I would kill anyone. I wouldn’t. I have no desires to. But if life had been different, maybe I would have.)

But the more I think about this all, the more I see how much I’ve grown. I’m very rarely violent now. I still sometimes slip. I always will. But the less often, the better. It’s been 2 weeks, 4 days since I have last hit someone, and I honestly didn’t meant to that time. I just meant to knock off a hat. Before that, it had been months, if not years. Long enough, that I stopped keeping track of it. Long enough, that I trust myself not to now. 

It’s been years since I last saw the demon. I cut off communication with P after high school ended because without her, we had nothing to talk about. And I didn’t want to be about that anymore. i wanted to move on. 

And I’ll be entirely honest here, I’d like to say that I’m fully over it, that I haven’t thought about the whole thing in years. But that would be lying, and I told myself when I quit the first time, that I wasn’t going to lie about this. I don’t know how something like a person you don’t talk to can be so hard to quit, but honestly, it feels like a weird sort of addiction to me. I know that human beings are not addictive substances, but that’s what it feels like. it’s enough to convince me not to do anything actually addictive. It took me over a year after high school to get myself to stop reflexively going to her facebook page. It took me over two years to stop thinking of her every single time that I saw a woman with sunglasses on her head, or heard a country song. It took so damn long for me to stop writing about her. And honestly? I haven’t stopped. I wrote a story to close that Era in my writing only last year, finished it only 5 months ago. And there’s still another out there, that I won’t finish for years down the line. And maybe then, it’ll finally be over. 

But it’s not now. And that means that I need to keep working on myself, working every day to not slip into who I used to be. To have empathy and understanding for the people around me, and to continue to teach it to the children. To think creatively, and focus my attentions on things that won’t hurt people. To catch myself when I find myself starting to think about her. Or worse, starting to spiral with the same sort of idealology for someone else. And that does happen sometimes. I’ve been good about catching it so far, but it’s there lurking in my brain. It’s a part of me, even though it’s a part I’ve put in it’s own little time out corner. 

Because I have to work to be better. To be a better person, to atone for the things that I’ve done. 

And I guess when it comes down to it, that’s what makes me different. The choice to see the hurt the actions I’ve caused and do something about it. Not to hurt, because to be honest, she’s so damn oblivious that she never even noticed. But to those around me at the time. Like the ex I lost because of it. And to P, because there were things he didn’t do before I taught them to him. Like follow around women in a creepy manner. I had no idea at the time what that kind of sense of entitlement and that behavior can lead to. I was very naive. And if he ever does turn out to be a serial killer, or even a rapist, I know that I will feel the guilt of the things I taught him. And I know that’s why I can’t risk going into the spiral of it again, even though I know that it never actually hurt her. It’s the choice to evaluate my own past actions, and stop the harmful ones from happening again. To make a conscious effort to be a better person every single day, even when I’m tired. Even when it’s exhausting. Even when I’m sitting here being sad and repeatedly listening to Demi Lovator’s “Sober” It’s tempting at times, but in the immortal words of Taylor Swift: “Now that I’m clean, I’m never gonna risk it.”

tldr: I’m probably not going to be a serial killer, and neither is my creepy friend from high school, and also, I read a book about Jeffrey Dahmer

I doubt anyone actually reads this. It’s very long and a weird mix of personal and random facts about Jeffrey Dahmer. Also a note on the mood of the weekend as we were discussing who in our class would be a serial killer: we were also dressing up American Girl Dolls at the same time. because that’s just what we do. talk about serial killers while we play with dolls. 

[fraddit]

My recent experience with depression, anxiety, and ADHD

I figured I would make a post about this, because I know that at least a few of my mutuals are dealing with some or all of these things themselves and might find this helpful.  Who knows?  Very long, very personal, but mostly positive post under the cut.  Like, really, more information than you probably ever wanted to know about me and my problems.  Proceed, if you feel so inclined.

First, a brief history, for context.  Throughout elementary and high school, I consistently scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests.  Then, I almost flunked out of high school, barely got my diploma, took a year off, and started art school college for an animation English degree.  I was going to write novels.  After a year or two of that, I decided I could write without a degree, so I dropped out.  What followed was a decade of several strangely varied and unrelated jobs and no novel writing. Working a stable corporate gig while not accomplishing (or even pursuing) any of my personal creative goals was DESTROYING MY SOUL.  So, I quit my job to become a full-time student and finish my degree, because at least that was kind of in the same universe as actually being creative.  And now, a year or two later, here I am, 32 and a few semesters away from finally finishing that English degree.  Clearly brains won’t get you everywhere kids.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7 and was on some form of medication until sometime in high school, when I decided I didn’t want to take it anymore, for reasons I won’t bother getting into.  It never occurred to me to even consider medication again until this semester, when everything fell apart.

ADHD can impact a person in a multitude of ways.  For me, the biggest impact is probably executive function issues.  I can wander through the garden of my ideas all day long.  I cannot make myself sit down and do work, no matter how much I may want to.  For personal goals, that means a literal solid decade of zero accomplishment.  For school, that means procrastinating papers until the night before or morning of or sometimes even two weeks late, on the night before the professor has to turn in their grades.  And the level of personal effort it took to make myself write that two-week-late paper was herculean in measure, when it really should not have been.

I’ve since learned that many professionals suspect this very common procrastination habit of ADHD folks is actually a kind of self-medicating by way of adrenaline via stress response.  Which sounds entirely plausible to me, because every semester since I’ve been back at school, I’ve found myself pushing the risky boundaries of procrastination further and further, like a drug addict needing a higher dose to get a fix.  A very unsustainable and unhappy process all around.

Which brings me to this semester, when the wheels finally fell off the car, and one of the campus psychologists found me crying on a bench outside the counseling center because they were closed for lunch and meetings, and I didn’t know where else to go.  I couldn’t do any of my homework, was crying every day, and having panic attacks.  To put it simply, I was a fucking mess.

I made more appointments at the counseling center, I spoke with my professors about what I was going through (hello more panic attacks), and for the first time in over a decade, I remembered that there are medications I should maybe try, and I made an appointment to see the psychiatrist at the campus medical clinic.  (Also, guys, if any of you are students, look into your campus resources.  There’s support for everything at my school.  There’s even an office that’s only there to help guide students to all the other support options.  Seriously, mental health, child care, food, housing, you name it.  Get the help you need.)

When I explained everything I had been going through, the very nice psychiatrist at the clinic told me, with an unsettling degree of alarm in her voice, that I was “deeply depressed”. Which, I knew, but she really sounded shockingly concerned.  And it’s like, jeeze, I maybe didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten, because I was just living with this shit every day, so it was kind of ‘normal’ for me.

Anyway, she agreed to start me on meds for my ADHD.  The one I’ve been taking is called Vyvanse.  I started on the lowest dose and have been gradually increasing.  A month in, I’m at a dose where I can clearly tell a difference, and it’s having a noticeable impact.  I wrote a meta yesterday.  I was thinking the thoughts, and just sat down and wrote it.  This morning, I got up and wrote some more, just notes for future things to do, but I did it.  Fuck, I’m writing this fucking thing right now.

I thought that maybe I should write this shit out, and it took a little while sitting and getting my momentum going, but now I’ve written 800 1300 1650 words.  And I’m sitting here actually crying as I type this paragraph, because this small little thing is like the biggest fucking thing in my life.

I don’t have any way to accurately explain what a big deal it is for me to have actively decided to write something and then to have actually actively produced content of my own volition and design, that wasn’t assigned to me and didn’t have a due date or a grade attached.  And, that I’ve done it repeatedly now…

OVER TEN YEARS.  Over ten years I went, writing almost nothing. Might as well have been zero words. Guys, I’ve been walking around with a trilogy of speculative fiction novels in my head for over ten years, I’ve been planning another unrelated novel for the last two.  I’ve been planning something like 30 fanfics, across two fandoms, and another 20 metas for the past year.  Part of me probably assumed feared that none of that would ever see the light of day. But now, it suddenly feels like maybe I’ll actually manage to write some of it.  And I’m hoping like fuck that it’s not just a fluke.

Now, the ADHD meds aren’t the only thing I’ve been doing to contribute to this ‘good place’ I’m in currently.  I’ve been going to counseling.  Apparently, I have a lot of negative feelings about myself and my inability to accomplish jack shit for a whole decade.  Who would’ve guessed?  I also have weekly sessions with the disabilities accessibility team at my university to work on external methods for dealing with my executive function issues. (Again, if you’re a student, utilize your university resources.  You’re already paying for them with tuition.)  And, this is obviously not an option for everyone, but even before I started the ADHD meds, I took advantage of the fact that I live in a state where certain botanical products are easily and legally available and found a brand of gummies that really help with my anxiety and panic attacks.  (They’re high cbd, low thc, so calming and don’t make you high.)

So far, the meds aren’t 100% sunshine and rainbows.  With the dose I’m at right now, where I’ve been Getting Things Done, I can actively feel the drug, which is… not the greatest.  I feel jittery, vaguely anxious, like I’ve drank way too much coffee but worse.  And, the decreased appetite is something I really have to be vigilant about, because I don’t have any room to lose weight.  These were both known possible side effects of stimulant meds, so I wasn’t surprised, and perhaps the doctor and I will be able to fine tune the dosing or try another med or something.  But right now, I think I’m really leaning toward, I’ll put up with the side effects, because holy shit, I can finally actually do what I want to do.  Also, I think (and Nice Doctor Lady thinks) the new higher dose is having a positive, stabilizing impact on my mood.

I guess my reason for writing all of this, other than pure catharsis, is to say, if you’re dealing with shit like this, try to be willing to consider all your options.  For whatever reason, I didn’t think about trying medication for my condition.  It wasn’t even like I was anti-meds or something.  I just didn’t even think about it.  Not until a few months back, when I sent a random ask to an ADHD blog on here, asking how they managed to make themselves write, and they responded with I had to get medication.  Suddenly, it was like… why have I not been considering this option?  So, this story is for anyone else out there that maybe also hadn’t thought to consider this option.

And really, not just the medication.  I’m a hide behind walls, overly independent, do things on my own, never ask for help sort of person.  But, I guess I finally reached a level of desperation where I was like, Clearly, doing this by myself, my way, has not gotten me the results I want.  So, fuck it, I’m going to ask for help from every professional available to me.  Which, I’m very lucky, and currently have ready access to multiple resources in a way not everyone does, but being open to getting this much assistance is very new territory for me.

I’m not really sure how best to wrap this up.  If anyone actually read all of this, I’m astonished and… Hi, I guess?  You really know quite a bit about me now.  Hopefully, I haven’t scared anyone off.  And, if anybody has further questions about any of this or you want to talk about your own issues, I’m sincerely available for that. I think the world we live in today makes it too easy to feel completely alone, even when you’re surrounded by people, and I’m here for chats, if you need it.

[literarygoon]

This interview was originally published by the Humber Literary Review

So,

Yasuko Thanh is an acclaimed short story writer and novelist from Victoria, B.C. After winning the Journey Prize for her short story about an island leper colony, “Floating like the Dead”, she went on to gain wide acclaim for her historical Vietnam-based novel The Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains. Her work often features spiritual or fantastical elements, as well as brutality and violence, and fixates on those who exist just outside the margins of polite society. Her latest is a memoir called Mistakes to Run With that details her upwards ascent from teenage prostitute to literary icon.

The Humber Literary Review’s Will Johnson caught up with Yasuko to talk about George Orwell, what it’s like to leave Christianity behind, and how it feels to be truly naked in public.

HLR: George Orwell once said “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying.” I thought about his words while reading your book, where it seems like you’re relentless about unearthing all your past foibles and sins for everyone to see. I admire your dedication to the truth, to introspection, but I wonder what compelled you to complete this public moral inventory. 

Why share your darkest secrets and shames with such a huge audience?

YT: When I started writing this memoir, I was still in therapy after a stay in the psych ward. It was Christmas of 2016, and in a six months period I’d won the Roger’s Writers’ Trust Prize and been abandoned by my husband of nine years. Now it was Christmas and my new anti-psychotic meds were addressing the worst of my mental illness symptoms. I no longer spent each day contemplating how to take my life, so I stopped going to therapy, and convinced myself that the writing of the memoir could serve as a replacement for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. All my life, writing has been a sort of processing mill for experience so this idea, of writing as pseudo-therapy, was nothing new.

I used my experiences to shed light on certain issues. I wanted to examine the stigmatization of street-workers, and its contribution to a social milieu in which violence against sex workers has flourished. The experiences didn’t have to me mine per se but they were the ones I was most intimate with. Stories come from everywhere but the best ones often come from our own lives, what we think and feel, who and what we care about. 

At the time of the Pickton murders, the city of Vancouver propelled a harmful myth: that street workers were less valuable than other people. This thinking, this stigmatization of a group, was an obstacle to safer working conditions for them, and created the kind of environment on Vancouver’s downtown eastside from which nearly 60 women went missing. 

Various studies have looked at why adolescents start selling sex. At the time I was working the streets, I often felt that Social Services and the legal system had driven me to it.  I’d been denied Independent Living – welfare for youth under eighteen – I’d been jailed for shoplifting and could no longer maintain my career as a "booster."  I had seen friends arrested and forced by the police to violently choke up whatever acid or hash they had stashed in their mouth.  The sex workers I saw wore fur coats and red pig skin boots.

Money was the trade off for the conflicts I would experience with the law and abusive customers and pimps.  

I spent much of my career in the sex trade in Vancouver.

From the age of fifteen onward, my life included prostitution, arrests, drugs, an abusive relationship, and struggles with mental health. In 1998, when I realized I was pregnant with my first child, I began to examine my past and consider what I wanted my future to be like. What would I tell my child about the kind of person I was?

The seeds for the memoir were planted back then. 

My hope with this book was to begin a dialogue about the continued criminalisation of street-imbedded youth. A new model for understanding is needed, because their criminalisation entrenches them further in street life without addressing the social issues that put them there in the first place. I’d love for this book to spur a dialogue between legislators and the people for whom the skills and attitudes of the streets are logical means of survival. I’d love to contribute in some small way to the struggle for tolerance and open-mindedness.  

HLR: In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, you said that you hate the “role of victim into which the sex-traded are often cast — because of all the accompanying pity”. I thought one of the most striking and refreshing elements of your memoir was that you never moralized about sex work, or wrote condescendingly about the people you met during that time. It was simply a choice you made, and a milieu you existed within, before moving on. That being said, the danger and violence associated with that lifestyle clearly took its toll both on you and others you love. 

With all the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding the industry, is there something you’d like the average citizen to understand about that world?

YT: During the mid-1980s, right when I was entering the sex trade, working in both Victoria and Vancouver, I remember being chased from sidewalks with a garden hose, and men and women marching with placards.  I hid behind dumpsters and waited for the mobs to clear.  I was engaged with a profound feeling of puzzlement that people could be so self-assured without even knowing me or my name. 

One night, when I was about eighteen-years-old, I was sitting with my friend Frances in a diner called the Korner Kitchen, on the same corner where we caught dates, the corner of Richards and Helmcken. We drank coffee in the vinyl-seated booth; she stirred in her sugar and licked the spoon before laying it on the table. Neither one of us could see ourselves turning tricks forever, and we shared the conviction that we’d be good at a multitude of things, if we only had a chance to try them. She wanted to be a teacher, could see herself in that role. 

“But I wonder about a criminal record,” I said. 

Both of us had one.

 “With the kind of work you want to do,” she said, knowing I wanted to be a writer, “it won’t matter, anyway.”

The British philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch said that the goal of every writer was to cultivate what she called “true sight,” the ability to recognize other people really exist. I’m currently reading The Wisdom of the Body by Sherwin B. Nuland. In his chapter on “Biology, Destiny, and Free Will” he quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Without imagination of another’s mind there can be no understanding of the other and therefore no love, and without love there can be no morality.” To be good, he says, is to imagine intensely and comprehensively the pains and pleasures of others. The great secret is love, or a going out of our own nature, an identification of ourselves with the other. 

The intimate tone of a memoir made it the ideal genre to negotiate such intensely personal material, and I hope it gives people the means to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

I guess what I’d like people to understand is that we/they have names. We have parents, siblings, spouses, children. To understand that “there but for the grace of God, go I.” That everyone has an identity outside of the roles we play even if, or maybe especially if, that role is dealer, junkie, prostitute, panhandler, street kid, etc. 

HLR: You were raised within an evangelical Christian context, but left the church and your faith behind as a teenager. This is a painful and confusing process, one that I went through, that often leaves people without something to replace their beliefs with. Have you ever been successful at filling the God-shaped hole? And is there any sort of spirituality you embrace?

YT: The spirituality I embrace is my personal religion of honouring anything and everything that spurs my writing. I deal with any number of doubts on a regular basis. Will I be good enough? Is what I have to say worth saying? Will anybody care? 

It’s enough to stop you in your tracks.

But stopping isn’t the same as quitting. 

And what keeps me going, and writing, is, at its core, akin to religious faith. 

Writing is what helps me battle the daily truth that people are separated by vast distances. And one of my main motivations,  one of the reasons I write, is because it helps me capture something from the inexorable, outward flow of time.  It’s nothing less than a fight against my own mortality, and a balm against my sadness at the transience of all things.

“No man writes except to get out of hell,” Antonin Artaud wrote from an insane asylum. 

I have to strongly believe in what I’m doing or I can’t do it. 

Toni Morrisson, expressing a similar dichotomy, wrote that love “is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” That sums it up nicely. 

I write all chips in, plunging ahead confidently, blindly, without real proof that anything will come of it, though maybe being published is a little bit like proof that one is on the right track -- but you can’t wait for signs. My belief or practice is based more on a type of apprehension: that, if I don’t write, something bad may happen. 

I’m not sure what. 

Maybe I’d stop being me. Or I’d go insane. Or the sky would fall. Not-writing is my version of hell. 

I love the Wallace Stevens quote that goes: “After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that which takes its place as life’s redemption.”

Reading can be a spiritual act, in the way it affects the soul. Writing, for me is a way of expressing my hopes and wishes, and in that sense, it is a form of prayer.  

HLR: I’m working on a memoir at the moment, and one of the constant concerns is whether or not I’m honestly depicting the people involved—especially if the truth is less than flattering. I know you’ve changed some names, and utilized a composite character, but I’m sure there are people from your past who could potentially read your work and take issue with what you’ve written. How did you navigate these concerns while writing Mistakes to Run With, and how did you decide what to include and what not to?

YT: As you’ve pointed out, the people who share our lives may have very different opinions from us about what is appropriate and what is not to include in a work on nonfiction. I did ask one of my children about a specific episode in their life and whether they would feel comfortable with me sharing the story. They didn’t. So, out of respect for them, I didn’t include it in the book. However, the rest of my family and friends were fair game. 

That said, my aim was not to vilify anyone, because that’s bad writing, and I even pulled some punches with the intent of creating well-rounded characters. Good writing portrays character with all its complexity intact. Though, I’m sure there are people out there who are angry about things I wrote about. My answer to them is, Write your own book. I knew well in advance that I wasn’t going to let friends or family read it before it was published. I didn’t want to be swayed by their comments. I didn’t want to censure myself. I think writing by consensus is kind of a terrible idea. Post-publication, I’m happy to talk to anyone who takes issue, but the idea of being vetted beforehand? 

I think the prospect of allowing friends and family to sound in with their evaluations and appraisals of the work would make me too nervous to write at all.     

HLR: I love how diverse your work is, and how you seem to effortlessly jump genres. Your next novel is about Julia Pastrana, a 19th-century woman born with a genetic condition that resulted in abnormal growths of hair all over her body. I’m curious whether you’re purposefully challenging yourself to try new things, or if inspiration just happened to take you there. How did you land on this particular premise?

YT: That particular idea came about at a time I was reading a lot of books on so-called “freaks.” One book I remember in particular was A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities but Jan Bondeson. I came across Julia Pastrana’s story in there. What intrigues me about her story is the fact that she married her manager and toured across Europe and North America, even meeting royalty according to some versions. The hook (for me) is the way the story can be read one of two ways: her manager was just another kind of pimp who married her and told her he loved her to keep his paycheck close to home, or he was a man who, despite her unlikely appearance, was able to look past her outer shell and see her, love her, for who she was...I like the idea of playing with both versions, and having portions of each stand in for the truth. I like the idea of, perhaps, the truth being unknown even to Pastrana and her manager. 

We’re, all of us to varying degrees, mysteries to ourselves, often acting on our feelings whose origins lie in conflicting places. In these apparent dichotomies is where people come most alive for me. These contradictions in ourselves -- that’s when characters come most alive for me.

But here’s where I’m going to burst your bubble. That project has been put on the back-burner. Right now I’m working on two other projects. One is a collection of short stories with the working title, Death Rituals for a Modern Age. The other is a novel set in the present day, tentatively called, The Administration of Elementary Hopes. They share common themes of love and death (what else?) and I’m trying to lighten the load of the material through the use of dark humour, and in the case of the novel, the structure and tropes of the Gothic tale. 

HLR: Quill & Quire once quoted you saying “a good scream is worth a whole couple of months of therapy.” You were speaking about your musical projects, including your neo-punk band 12 Gauge Facial. I imagine the artistic impulse involved in creating your music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. How does music fit into your artistic practice?

YT: The artistic impulse involved in creating music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. Music fits into my artistic practice like a really good chocolate bar between meals. It’s one of the things I do between writing different works, or to jog something loose.

It also gives me a chance to express in greater depth things that continue to haunt but that were glossed over in the memoir. You can’t fit everything into the pages of a book. If I had it would have made a better doorstop than a book. The original plan was to release an album at the same time as the memoir. My idea was that it could form a kind of soundtrack for the book -- but, alas, money and time conspired against me. That said, the project hasn’t been abandoned. Only postponed. I have sixteen original tracks that I’m hoping to release at some point in the near future. 

HLR: I really appreciated the conclusion of your book, though I won’t share any spoilers here. What I appreciated about your approach was that you didn’t tie things up with a tidy bow, claiming your life issues are resolved, but rather acknowledged that you continue to be a work-in-progress (as we all are) with problems to face. Life doesn’t have endings, really, and neither does your book. Did you have to resist the urge to include a “What I’ve Learned” passage to the end?

YT: Resisting the urge wasn’t hard — in fact, I fought against this type of ending. Initially, the memoir ended many years earlier than the version which iI published. Both my editor and agent urged me to look at the material again, and consider extending the narrative up to the present day. In the end, I agreed to have the ending of the book coincide with the Rogers Writers Trust prize, and I’m happy I did so. But rather than have the book end with a Frank Capra-esque moment, where we know that everything from here on in is going to be rosy, I wanted to convey the sense that, as you said, life doesn’t have endings and we all are continuously working on ourselves by squarely facing our problems. I attempted to do this structurally, in terms of chapter headings, and through repetition of certain key lines or phrases. 

I’m glad you think it worked.

The Literary Goon

[scheelelillies]

“Steal the Spotlight” by Honeylass ( @honeylass​ ) [Mature] [CH 1 – 23] [word count: 52,604] ★

Features: detective!Deku, quirkless!Deku, angst, childhood trauma

Featured Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Naomasa Tsukauchi, Yagi Toshinori, Midoriya Inko

Plot Summary: Izuku is a quiet, withdrawn and somber nineteen-year-old detective, who is subconsciously annoyed whenever someone brings up that he is “young and quirkless”. He is unwillingly roped into a police / hero initiative to improve occupational public relations. He moves with his mother to the new district to begrudgingly begin the new initiative, hoping more or less to get it “over with” than to actually improve relations.

Izuku shows a lot of signs of childhood trauma: claustrophobia, lack of spirit and hope in his fieldwork, distaste for heroes and for being treated like a child. He heavily relies on his mother for emotional and personal support, meeting up with her, talking with her, and allowing her to be the one person in the world who is allowed to see him in the midst of a mental breakdown / when childhood trauma returns to haunt him. It’s clear she’s been acting as his therapist (though through maternal and not professional means) for a very long time, preventing him from breaking more than he is already broken. Though the police / hero work bothers him, he has some resolve to not run away from his problems anymore – even though they are clearly tearing open old wounds.

Criticism: The introduction of Izuku as a detective does not drag: it’s explored very well situationally rather than descriptively, allowing the narrative to fully flesh out Izuku’s muted personality. His aged!up character is believable. There’s a wonderful balance between police and hero work, in which Izuku and the hero he is paired-up-with-at-the-time have immensely different reactions to the cases they are working on. For example, Izuku will focus on cracking a phone’s passcode, while Toshinori signs an autograph for someone they are trying to get information from. They approach the cases from different perspectives, and these are conveyed amazingly well both in the situation at hand and in conversations between the characters about proper methods. Mental health issues and the childhood trauma are dealt with realistically and exceptionally well, delving into coping mechanisms (said mechanisms not always working, too).

The story flows well and the original arcs are captivating, alternating well between narrative and dialogue. It is not difficult to visualize, but the way the arcs are written leaves the reader continually guessing – and, all-in-all, it is very well-paced. There are a few occasional grammatical and structural flukes, but nowhere near large enough in quantity to derail interest in the story. The writing itself has been improving throughout the chapters, too, and it’s pleasant to see a work used as a learning experience! Looking forward to reading more!

Case Notes are spoiler-heavy, so they are included below this cut.

Case Notes

Case # 01: To his dismay he learns he is to work with his ex-childhood Hero All Might – who calls him “Shounen Detective / Midoriya Shounen” -- on a missing persons case, Tachibana Kana. Izuku sees the joint police / hero work as an irritation because the heroes usually get in the way of his work without meaning to. They track Kana’s last whereabouts to a nightclub called ‘Widow’ (temporarily working with Midnight after the USJ incident). They learn Kana was in love with a club owner, and that another female-only club called the ‘Honey Bee’ was involved. Kana shows up unannounced at the station, but appears to have been coached. Izuku cross-dresses to scope out the Honey Bee, eventually learning that the owner, Juliet Queen, was likely involved in Kana’s kidnapping. He ends up drugged by Juliet’s pheromones, but Toshinori steps in in-time. Izuku has a panic attack and convulses in the car after the arrest, waking up in the hospital from the drug overdose.

Case # 02: Investigation of a suspicious suicide, Ai Mino, and working in a partnership with Kamui Woods. They find a suicide note addressed to her newborn child, citing an abusive quirk marriage as a major reason why she 1) killed her husband Mao, and 2) committed suicide, but Izuku knows that Mino died before Mao was killed. He speaks with the nanny, Amare Grant. A thorough investigation reveals body-swapping / possession quirks, once again resulting in Izuku being attacked. Meanwhile, a suspicious psychologist named “Anna Kane” is nosing about Izuku’s past.

Case # 03: Inko relays the sports festival via a phone to her son, who is still in the hospital. Izuku notices a member of an anti-quirk gang at the festival. Inko tells off the man, but she, Izuku, and several heroes are left to diffuse the bomb. Anna Kane is offered a temporary job at U.A. to give lessons on villain psychology, working hand-in-hand with the Police Liaison.

Case # 04: Izuku is asked to explain the police department to future heroes at U.A. Tsukauchi learns a psychiatrist was found dead along with Izuku’s medical files stolen.  Izuku teaches self-defense to students of 1-A, but the school goes into a lock-down, and Izuku uncovers a plot to render students temporarily quirkless. He finds Katsuki allegedly stabbed by a student, and the attacker knows something about Izuku’s past. Izuku wakes tied up in front of Toshinori and Shouta after Shouta intervened in Izuku’s attack on the student. Izuku is fully hearing voices at this point, but the captured student is revealed to be a spy. The student commits suicide to show that he is a “good boy”, while Izuku implied not to be. Izuku asks Inko to come to the school, shaken by what is going on.Izuku meets with the students of U.A. from time-to-time, including to interview damage left from the USJ incident (he is older than his canon!counterparts in this fanfiction, and he does not have a childhood history with Bakugou Katsuki). Toshinori has realized that Izuku appears “broken” and attempts to investigate it for himself by speaking with Inko – thinking he has probably met the woman before, only to get side-stepped answers and more questions. Toshinori also learns that Tsukauchi chose Izuku for the initiative, as he is young enough to help with trafficking cases and has worked ninety-eight operations before, most of them undercover.

Izuku shows a lot of signs of childhood trauma: claustrophobia, lack of spirit and hope in his fieldwork, distaste for heroes and for being treated like a child. He heavily relies on his mother for emotional and personal support, meeting up with her, talking with her, and allowing her to be the one person in the world who is allowed to see him in the midst of a mental breakdown / when childhood trauma returns to haunt him. It’s clear she’s been acting as his therapist (though through maternal and not professional means) for a very long time, preventing him from breaking more than he is already broken. Though the police / hero work bothers him, he has some resolve to not run away from his problems anymore – even though they are clearly tearing open old wounds.

Hints to keep in mind for the future reveal include:

Izuku’s remembrance of his younger self screaming in the dark: “P-please let me out. Please … please! Please don’t leave me here! I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to die here.” à indicative of captivity and his current claustrophobia; vague mentions of a “box” / dark punishment room as well

the trauma likely occurred between six and eleven years old; Inko hinted he’s needed her presence for eight years, and that his room hasn’t looked like a child’s room since he was six. Hints of Izuku staying in a ward for some time, visiting a psychiatrist between the ages of nine and ten, and that his medical files are sealed. All Might is likely indirectly involved, as he remembers Inko from somewhere and she blames “All Might” for not reaching out to him

he sometimes hallucinates others saying words, as well as blood on his hands

internalized harassment: Izuku talks about his quirk as though it’s a “defect”, and about himself “as a monster”

Izuku has an alternative coping mechanism: a teddy bear

Ame from Case # 02 possesses Izuku, but has a mental breakdown from feeling the trauma inside

other children, including the attacker in Case # 04, have gone through what traumatized Izuku

Izuku falls on the precipice of a breakdown when his emotions slip from his control and when too much attention is focused on him. He tends to find somewhere private to go, and calls his mother for grounding support

[maynardlewis]

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[sagastar-blog]

Memo to the vetaMerse 2.1 “EarthStarDate 1=0, 1=1(thugged) ...  > Jeff+4yrs...”

Jeff continues to work on his graphic novel / telenovela, writing

Dear MetaVerse,

Things are not going very well, as usual. In fact, once again, for a record 3+ Earth years and counting, it’s once again the worst day ever. I probably just did my best impression of a depressed person for the barista that looks kind of Dunhamesque here at OQ. Yeah, she’s kind of got a doe-like “I’d like to poke your face” quality....but I digress.

Are you guys coming soon? Please come soon. 

Every day here is the worst because it’s another day without hanging with Lucius. Seriously. It would be one thing if I were doing something meaningful with myself during this long, painful separation since February 2015. But it’s just been brutal with the human beings, mandudes. Like, I haven’t been treated this poorly by an entire race of life forms since that one time back in ummm “Cygnus 41.″ Right? Yeah. 

I don’t have a job. I’m an SAT Prepration Tutor at a local stripmall brainwash center. Yesterday I informed my employers at Faireigh Dickinson that I wouldn’t be returning next semester to teach because they pay me hardly enough to afford the commute. I’m paid $2,800 per course I teach, despite the fact that I have a Phd and years of quality teaching and research experience. Not to mention, by the way, but I’m sort of like, you know, someone important in that I created the universe and am in the process of destroying it rignt now, and this includes being the world’s greatest teacher if permitted to be myself. Am I allowed to be myself anywhere I go? Of course I’m not--I’m treated like scum, nevermind a person worthy of respect....not even by my own “students,” people who supposedly pay to learn from me.     

So yeah, I’m not going to do that anymore. I have no idea what I’ll do instead. None. It’s a dead end here. Please send help soon. The humans have highjacked the ship and I’m starting to lose faith that I’m ever going to get it back. It’s time to go to Emergency Level 8 and shut everything down for good. The rest of the MetaVerse, as i know you know, is counting on me. This gives me a sense of purpose. And so, even if you don’t come with reinforcements soon, I will soldier on. We will convince the humans that they are UNWITTINGLY PILOTING OUR SHIP DIRECTLY INTO A BLACK HOLE! OH NO! LOOK ahhhhh h h!

Love, JustJeff

(Scene: outside of Jeff’s perfectly ordinary but otherwise torturous first-floor rented apartment, which he shares with a human couple and a fish, on the way to the cafe around the corner past the antique Stop N Shop and the new mediocre hipster record store) 

Jeff (standing on the streetcorner by OQ Coffee in The Orchard, speaking aloud, as if teaching or giving a sermon): Ah. Oh. My. Goodness. You see, total stranger i’ve never seen before, little girl who probably should be enjoying its encounter with me, her neighbor, proverbial parent, and so on on the street ... I’m in what’s called “John Foxxx Mode” right now? I think he was some sort of Quaker firebranding preacher, and I’d rather continue trusting that instinct. Instead of, like, looking it up on Wikipedia and stuff? Yeah. So. John Foxxx Mode, in which I speak my mind aloud in a non-violent manner, is a way of being which is in accordance with both my legal rights as a U.S. citizen and according to the InterDimensionalGalactic Code of Interstellar Conduct. John Foxxx Mode gives me the right to express incredibly important deep theologico-philosophical truths about human nature in front of you at this moment. It’s what I call “science.” You’ll learn about science in school, I hope, some day. Have a nice day out with your Daddy if that’s who that is...and it’s not, in that he’s not your real Daddy. That’d be Gaia. Then Me and Lucius. It’s simple, really. 

Ahem, as I was saying...

(A flock of starlings flies above and slightly in front of Jeff. They fly in, as always, in mathematical, mimetic, musical narrative formation from the Highland Park Public Library and flap rhythmically over the supermarket parking lot towards the rising “noonday” November sun.)

Gaia (thinking): O0o%f, these 4 piss him offfff, ja.

You’re a human being. It’s not your fault you’re a virus. I didn’t say it’s ALL your fault--some of it is mine, of course---but this doesn’t change the truth, missus. I gave you free will to do whatever you want. And you chose to do this.

Gaia: You’re all just having some sort of mystical experience.

Jeff: I’ve been en*G*lightened for nearly 4 years among you. Will you please treat me like a decent human being by expressing an interest in my thoughts? Will you please give me a job that pays me in accordance with the value of my labor? Will you please give me back the kind of job I gave up back in 2013, in a terrible economy so that my female partner could pursue her professional aspirations (as stupid as they were and are), as a full-time teacher of some kind? (I’m especially interested in working with girls! I have no experience with them, and it’s kind of a weakness in my teaching dossier.) How about health insurance, or at least the ability to pay for my medicine (i take a prescription drug called Cymbalta and medical marijuana for a chronic pain condition, aggravated by stress and anxiety, called syringomyelia)? 

Do you see what I’m getting at here?

I’m not asking to be treated like anything but a normal human being--the same can be said for many people around the world. This does not make me a politician. I’m not running from or for anything. I have worked hard in my 39 years on this planet and have sacrificed a lot. No matter what you think about someone in my position, regardless of your religion, you cannot possibly believe that I’ve been treated fairly or with justice, nevermind ethical morality. I am the world’s greatest father, the world’s greatest husband, and the world’s greatest teacher....in addition to being the world’s greatest everything and nothing in spacetimulsineity.

Just because you see me in John Foxxx mode, or acting like a crazy or angry old man, or like someone with a mental problem, does not mean that I have a problem, that I’m on drugs, or that I’m anything other than what I say i am. 

YOU DO NOT LET ME SPEAK TO YOU!

If you don’t allow me to speak the truth, if I’m not allowed to teach in a job where i’m allowed to share the wisdom I have earned, then I am forced to do ridiculous, even dangerous things that are not a part of my nature. These things I do that you think are silly or anti-societal are YOUR sickness. When I pretend to speak to my imaginary daughter Gaia on the phone, it’s partially a joke and partially true, in that I...

Gaia: They think I’m real.

Jeff: Good one. Yeah. Neverforget to remember never to forget that Gaia is onmiscient and knows every little detail about you all, dear listeners and readers and gamers aboard spaceship Earth--what i good-naturedly like to call AIR DOGGGGGGY DOG ... 

Gaia’s omniscient. Guess what? So am I. But, you see, our omniscience is “complementary.” My daughter’s more into math, and I just am math, and have never really taken an interest in myself because, well, because i have other things to do. What’s important here is that you severe a link between me and Lucius and our “higher power” here on Earth, Gaia, when you prevent me from inhabiting reality. Again, if I don’t get a job in which I am not only permitted but ENCOURAGED to speak the truth, regardless of how inconvenient it may be for you all to hear it, I am being wronged. I will get my ship back or go down fighting. You have no right to run this planet into the ground--EXCUSE ME, I’m talking to all 6 billion or whatever of you on board--you have no right to treat the other, innocent inhabitants of this planet as your neverending resource and to poison their environment. You have no right to do what you do to your children and call it teaching. Again, it’s not your fault you’re so ignorant. It is, however, your fault that you continue misbehaving when I’ve been telling you all for years how to act. Read anything I’ve ever written. When will you learn to obey?

These are simply the questions I ask myself when I’m feeling like I wish i could be unIlluminated.

(Jeff arrives at the coffeeshop, takes out his MacBook Air. He drinks coffee which tastes nostalgically and overwhelmingly of blueberries, and begins again to write.)

[alovethattasteslikestarving-blog]

27.09.2017

So, it’s been radio silence. I haven’t posted anything here, I haven’t written anything in my diary for almost a month, and I’ve neglected my friends [on the net, and in my personal life].

It’s been… a month. But I’m back, maybe not better than ever, but back, and thinking positive thoughts.

[trigger warning for personal account of depression/anxiety, if those themes are upsetting to you I would suggest unfollowing this blog].

When I created this blog I was in a good space, I was considering my goals, making plans for the future, and takings positive steps to achieve those ends. I planned to use the blog as an outlet, a tool with which I could exorcise some of the negativity I brewing in my mind and gut, and channel it into the anonymous abyss of the internet, instead of my material life. I don’t know if that is a good thing to do, but I felt like it was helpful at the time.

It worked! For about two weeks I felt really good, I was eating properly, sleeping [maybe not well, but at the right times], interacting with other people, and going to work on time with a decent attitude.

And then it stopped. Why? I’m not exactly sure, a big part of my mental shit is that is reduces my short term memory, all sense of time becomes an uncertain, fuzzy thing, to be pondered over. When I was a child my memory was clear as crystal, now, thinking about what I did yesterday is like wading through waist-deep mud. Maybe you’ve been there, or maybe your mental shit manifests itself in different ways. I read online that it’s a unique experience for everyone, even despite the fact that so many of us are going through the same things.

What else? I said I would be brutally honest when I started this blog. It holds me accountable. In a few years I want to look back at this post and be glad I’m not in the hole I was in last week and now. So, Ellery of the future, here is a glimpse, and I wish to the universe you’ve improved on it.

Think of your room in the old convent, think of the sandflies and the kingdom of dirty dishes scattered across your carpet around which they revolve. Think of the rancid smell, food rotting, death. Think of the tremor in your voice as you tell your mother that you are ‘doing fine, really good’, think of the ache in your throat and the pit in your gut, think of how your eyes burn with unshed tears, for no reason at all. Look at your calendar on the floor, when you were in a better mood it was full of dates and crossed out ‘to-dos’. You haven’t written in it for a week, and you have three assignments due soon. That burns you, inspires a debilitating concoction of guilt, shame, ambition, and nerves that do nothing to make you move to your desk and begin any of them. Why can’t you stand? Even you don’t know. You have spent three days in this bed, a drooled on island in a sea of waste. The blinds are drawn and your door is locked. If you killed yourself now no one would find you for days. And when they did? A stiff corpse, bloated and blue, a trail of spit or vomit or whatever speckling the lips and chin. 

You won’t do it, if only because your room is messy.

It comes to a head. You wake one Tuesday morning, with three essays due and a shift at work approaching. How can you do it all? You don’t. You prolong the inevitable and the effort, scrolling through drivel on the internet. Lazy. The time for work comes. You put on your uniform, and go back to bed. There is self-loathing, and eventually a panic attack. Has anyone ever looked as pathetic as you do now? Curled up in a pile of your dirty laundry, sobbing wretchedly, silent as you can.

Only two days ago did you receive feedback for an essay you wrote. You were proud of it, which is why you entered it into a competition in the first place. It was about mental illness. It was formal, and non-fiction.

‘Be careful not to glamorise or fetishise’ they said. ‘Make sure you are the right person to write this piece, have you experienced depression, are you depicting it accurately?’

It’s almost funny now. What they said about your essay. But fuck them.

Sometimes my depression has to be a friend. If it weren’t, I would spend the rest of my days living with someone I don’t get along with. And so, self sabotage!!

I do not attend work that day, and I do not call in to notify my manager of my absence. I can’t. Or at least, I feel like I can’t. As for the essays? No. They will not be happening today either. I look at the extension application form, which states that extensions can only be granted in the case of ‘serious circumstances’.

What the hell are they? Is this serious? Or am I a fraud?

I’m not a fraud; who the hell does this to themselves for fun?

In the end I call my mother. She lives far away because of her job, in a desert, but is coming home this weekend to visit my dad and brother. The airport is near my accommodation. She will pick me up. And book a doctors appointment. And help me make a budget. And ‘put your clothes in a bag dear, we can wash them at home’. And I love you.

I am supposed to be more resilient than this. My mother is too kind to me. Loves me too much.

We go home and I sleep in my childhood blankets and hope that I won’t wake up. Which is more passive than suicide, but just like me.

Basically, not such a great time. Not such a bad time. I saw the doctor, and in the end things turned out fine. She wrote me a medical certificate and booked another appointment to sort out drugs. In the past I have been very opposed to going onto any sort of anti-depressant, but I’m at a point now where I will try anything. I used to be very scared about losing my personality, or inhibitions, or even my ability to have an orgasm [which is not as important as my mental health I suppose, but cool I guess]. Other things: people on anti-depressants are more likely to have autistic children [is this true? I will ask the doctor], and weight gain [fuck my entire life].

What else? I went back to work but no one said anything about the shift I missed. I’ve had three since then and nothing. So I’m off the hook? No verbal reprimand? First day back wasn’t so great though. I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before for fear of being fired and when I asked a lady to show me her receipt she got really angry at me because she thought I was accusing her of stealing. In the end there was a huge verbal dressing down, in which she called me the rudest person she had ever met and threatened to speak with the manager. I apologised quickly. I felt too overwhelmed. It had not been my intention at all to ‘hurt her’. I was glad when she left, but she came back ten minutes later to show me her receipt. She interrupted the customer I was serving to thrust it in my face and ask me to apologise to her again.

I did. Profusely. It felt so bad, the things she was saying about me. Every time I tried to explain that it was work-place procedure she became crosser, until eventually I knew the only way to get rid of her was to simply apologise again. I made a fool of myself. But she didn’t go to the manager. So winning, I guess?

Work is fun.

Ellery of the future, how about this? 


You can’t leave your room. Because you are too scared of interacting with the people in your building, which means you can’t use the kitchen or the bathrooms. This is why you only eat crappy, pre-made food that seems to shrivel your guts and put you in a fever [all the sugar, oh god].

And you can’t tell you parents, because they still pay your rent and you don’t want to seem ungrateful. 


[sorry to anyone still reading, who thinks this is bleak, and complaining, I want my future self to be aware of how shit this point was, and never return to it].

I will see the doctor again on Friday. Maybe she will give me something hopeful. 

We will see. Right now I feel better about things, writing it all out like this is helpful.

To anyone experiencing similar things, or who just wants to talk, feel free to message me. If you don’t want to message me, or another internet friend, there are a lot of online resources to help you reach out. When I am doing really badly the BeyondBlue chatroom is pretty helpful, they have trained counsellors who you can message, and often it helps with perspective. Stay safe everyone.

All the love,

Ellery.