That beautiful exhale.

You know how, when you’re stressed, signals/input/stimuli etc have trouble reaching you? And how relieved you are when after that period of stress you slide down your favorite chair, sigh, and revel in that nothingness.

That beautiful exhale.

It’s not quite sleep or unconsciousness, nor is it complete alertness. It’s the moment before the long comfortable slide down into sleep, knowing that you have this moment before the dance starts again.

That beautiful exhale.

The noise started, acquired shape, about three years ago. The noise, of course, is manic-depression. Well, mine is. And what’s curious is that I didn’t notice the noise until last Christmas. Like you sometimes do when you get used to the white noise on TV. Problem is, I never could (since the noise started) concentrate properly, or even form a thought more complex than day to day life required of me.

The solution came, at least for me, in the most curious form. Drugs.

That beautiful exhale.

I’m on lithium now: as in that thing that makes lithium batteries, that thing that is used in nuclear reactors, that beautiful exhale.

Of course I’m being a bit hyperbolic here. The lithium that’s used in laptop batteries and nuclear reactors is not, strictly, the same lithium that is used to stabilize moods. What I take is called Litorax and it is a lithium carbonate salt (well, the base element of lithium is an alkali salt). But it is wonderful, and I never imagined I would say this, but it is.

I can actually think now. A few days ago I managed an almost full work day of concentration. That hasn’t happened in 3 years. Every day now feels like the end of a long workday.

Except… the work is only starting. Or, at least I hope so, seeing as I can work now.

Now, you might ask, as I am asking myself right now: what’s the purpose of the post?

To be honest, I don’t know. It’s been bugging me for a few months now and I couldn’t really move to anything else unless I finished this first.

So, onto the fun stuff!

Supposedtobes

I had the supposedtobes today. Here’s something to cheer you (me) up.

God Hates Astronauts

You should totally check out this webcomic. It is absolutely insane and fantastic.

Also because it has astronaut centaurs, a poltergeist cow’s head and voodoo superbears.

Seriously, check it out.

Edit: My Android WordPress app apparently won’t allow me to linkify to content. I am disappoint.

To make up for it (mostly me making things up to me) here’s a Merriam Webster video explaining the etymological origin of the word defenestrate, which is used spectacularly in the comic.

Prose and bibliophilia – the reading list of your life.

I was asked this on the NET yesterday: “what is the reading list of your life?” I didn’t get anything else to explain the question. The question came from  something called a moving picture collection. I’m pretty sure it’s an alien artifact. Well, that or a youtube video. They’re more or less the same though.

But the question still stands.

“What is the reading list of your life?”

This is the sort of question that furrows my brow. It forcibly reaches out of my computer and kneads my forehead until my brow is properly furrowed. Like an old man, or possibly something else that is really wrinkly (aliens? Hairless cats?).

I’m having a hard time with this question because I’m not sure how to interpret it. Is the intent merely that gauge what sort of reading is prevalent in my life? Or is it that which I enjoy the most when I read regardless of whatever else I read?

Possibly.

It could also be that it is asking us to think on what gives us shape. Sort of like High Fidelity’s Top 5 list. Only, not Top 5.

You know what I mean.

This is what makes the question tricky. What gives us shape? Admittedly the video asked me not to overthink this, so oops!

The straight answer would include all the standard classics for a fantasy/scifi geek: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Conan the Barbarian etc. But that only gives shape if you imagine those books encasing me and while that is cool (fuck yeah book fortress!), it isn’t necessarily what I had in mind.

I remember reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone when I was 15 or 16. My grandfather gave it to me for Christmas. He always gave me books for Christmas. This year though, well, this year I felt apathetic towards reading. There were cool video games to play, school to dismiss, work to be done and girls to dream about. So, I put the book into my to-read shelf where it lay for a year. I finally read it the following Christmas.

It blew me away. Muggles and wizards and castles and magic. It was (and still is) amazing. And I must have talked to everyone I knew about Harry Potter because my aunt suggested I read the Hobbit. To this day I don’t really know why she did that, though I imagine it must be because I talked about how much I loved Harry Potter.

I went to the library and checked out The Hobbit. It had a beautiful illustration of Smaug resting on his hoard done by John Howe and I took it with me wherever I went. Every spare moment I had was spent reading that book. When I finished Bilbo’s unexpected journey I followed Frodo to Mt. Doom and back. I owned (and still do) the trilogy with landscape paintings of Middle Earth on the cover, and if you peered close enough you could see the Fellowship so hopelessly lost on the canvas. The cover held as much allure to me as did the book itself. As with the Hobbit, I carried The Lord of the Rings with me everywhere. I witnessed Gandalf’s death on the fourth step going up the main stairs at MH, while on my way to french class. The books sat prominently on my desk so I wouldn’t have to spend time fishing them from my bag during breaks.

I was ravenous and Tolkien’s feast did nothing to satiate me. I wanted more and more I got.

After Tolkien and Rowling I read Keri Hulme and fell in love with weird and thoughtful prose. I read Elaine Cunningham and R.A. Salvatore along with a handful of other Forgotten Realms authors (Paul S. Kemp springs to mind) to keep my belly full. They tried to keep me fat and happy while I started Uni, where I came into contact with Beowulf, mightiest of heroes, and Wordsworth, W.B. Yeats, Irvine Welsh and George Mackay Brown (who led me to Scottish fiction) and Old English poetry. All of this added bits and bobs, pieces and pounds to the shape growing around me.

Outside of Uni I read Patrick Rothfuss while drinking awful smoked tea from Russia. I read Jack Vance’s Emphyrio while waiting for Emil to finish baking and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five while in the hospital waiting for him to come out of the oven. Somewhere along the line I read High Fidelity and Wonderboys. They reminded me that the most interesting people are those that are deeply flawed.

As the depression gripped me hard I read Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman and I cried.

One summer, as I was slowly recovering from a bad breakup and a hard winter of bleak thoughts I read Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness. I remember sitting in a patch of sun shining through the big window at the Reykjavík Museum of Modern Art, reading slowly, savoring each word, letting the meaning of what I was experiencing envelop me. Just like Rowling and Tolkien changed me so did Vance and Zelazny. Especially Roger Zelazny. Creature of Light and Darkness filled me with fire and meaning, and though I haven’t figured out how to stoke those embers I will.

This is the reading list of my life.

What’s yours?

Ghostbuster!

Consider this the ghost of done.

Well I aim to banish him. The writing pants are on, the FILDI (fuck it, let’s do it) is filled with oranges and my ass is firmly planted in that special groove of my desk chair. I’ll bring that sucker back to the land of the living.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

See you tomorrow.

“Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory… lasts forever”

I’ve wanted to write this for a long time now. For too long.

I haven’t until now because of the nagging doubt that I wouldn’t be able to do my subject justice, that I would sound melodramatic, ego-centric, full of shit, wrong and to top everything, look like an ass. I worry that people won’t care about what I have to say or that if they do they’ll pity me. I worry that my grammar and syntax will be shit, and that I’ll finally reveal that I don’t really know how to write in English. I’m worried that you won’t like me.

I’m sick and I’m ashamed of it.

To quote Ze Frank “why would you want to tell someone that you’re unfit, unworthy, even rotten? [...] it [shame] grows in secrecy and claims territory and adds a but to all your accomplishments and gifts. I did that – but. They like me – but. It says: remember in the end the only thing you can count on is me, because I know you’re unfit, unworthy, even rotten. It gets angry easily, it hears blame in peoples voices where there isn’t blame. It equates disappointment with disgust. It measures friendship and love by what can be taken away and not by what is there. And that is what shame feels like. Shame is that secret belief that you are unfit, unworthy, even rotten.”

I have struggled with depression for three years now. It’s past the “oh it’s just a period you have to work through” and I have to admit that I am sick. There’s another side to my illness though that complicates this: I’m bipolar which can (and has) send me on a merry roller-coaster ride now and again. But I’m not going to focus on my manic side now. It’s a lot less pronounced than my depression and not the primary source of my struggle.

No. I want to focus on the absolute black-hole of a sonuvabitch that is depression.

Depression is a master con artist. It is really damn good at lying to your face and subverting everything you think you know. If you combine that with bullying (which reinforces that secret inside of you — that you’re unworthy), which I had the pleasure to endure when I was a teenager, you have a pretty good roadmap to disaster. There are no way-posts here and every time you stop and ask for directions depression kicks in and tells you exactly what you shouldn’t do. And you follow blindly on. The delusion leading the unworthy.

For me it’s been a an unconscious struggle. Which is to say that I’ve always felt unworthy (bullying took care of that with a neat little package), I just always took that for granted. With my narrow focus I thought everyone felt like that. That’s not true though. It’s not healthy to feel unworthy and believe that that is a normal feeling.

But, I coasted on that for a long time. Even felt happy, though in a shame-defined way. Though that was before the depression.

Now. Well what now?

To be honest, I don’t know. I’m finding it harder to describe depression that I thought I would. And I feel like I’m rambling.

Void is the word I would use to describe depression. For the most part a total absence of emotion, cognition and will. You loose interest in your hobbies. You neglect those that love you and you feel vindicated when they get angry because of the “buts” shame adds to everything. Depression and shame work tandem to strip you of everything. In the end you’re left with nothing but the prospect of a future devoid and memories altered by lies. That’s when things finally become scary. Because, ultimately, if everything is void why not end it? Would there, honestly, be a difference?

I’ll be brutally honest.

I’ve thought about committing suicide twice.

The first time was two years ago and the second just over a month ago.

This is precisely why depression is so scary. It leads you to the water’s edge and asks you this question. “Would you feel any difference if you ended it?”

My answer in those two instances was no. I honestly believed that I wouldn’t feel a difference.

I’m better now, if only marginally. I’m tired and somehow trying to stumble forward. It’s not graceful but it’s the only thing I have. To be honest I’m not sure why I’m writing this, and I’m even less sure why I’m posting this here. But it feels right. Or at least it feels wrong to stay silent about this. I can’t, and I won’t, suffer in silence any more.

Depression is fucking scary. It can, and will, leave scars.

But as Keanu Reeves said in the Replacements: “Pain heals. Chicks dig scars.”

Here’s hoping he’s right.

“The Familiar’s Fidelity”

I’m in my last stretch of final assignments so I’m a bit strapped for time, therefore no fresh short. I will however ply this space with an older vintage that could fall under “terrible wizard”. Hope this fills the hungry … Continue reading →