Want more writing?

Life's going pretty okay lately. No job yet, but I'm starting to feel more hopeful. If you read the post about the zoloft side-effect I'm experiencing...lemme tell ya...it's not getting any better.

Anyway, do you guys want to read more short stories? I'd be glad to share the few I already have and even pen a few if you like. And if any of you know some publishers, lemme know ;) I'd write more, because I love doing it, but it's hard to feel motivated since I don't think my writing's anything to write home about (see what I did there?)

Laptop goes in tomorrow, but if it seems you guys want to read another story, I'll post one before I box this baby up.

As far as my usual social commentary...how is it possible for two independent people to be in a relationship? True, I'm dependent on my meds to keep from having psychotic breaks, but I try to internalize my problems. This blog is just me trying to tear down the wall a little and open up WITHOUT becoming dependent on others to make me happy. The woman I love is the same way, except more so. Even though we've been together once, the people we grew in to are so strong-willed and all that, that it seems like neither of us is willing to let the other make a move.

I don't have a solution for that problem yet, or even much more to say about it. I still have a lot of thinking to do.

Wednesdays

Even back when I was working, Wednesdays didn't seem too much like "hump day" to me. Today I feel a little tired but all is well.

I've decided to wait until Friday to ship off my laptop since I'll have a fun weekend and won't miss it as much :)

Now that I feel more comfortable, I'll post that essay I mentioned in the previous post. My writing style has evolved a lot since then, but it's one of those things that my English teachers said "whoa...you need to be a writer."

Without further adieu: Death and Rebirth

Most kids grow up happy. They run around with their friends, laughing like madmen, and enjoy life. Most kids cried when they skinned their knees. They cry and cry until mommy or daddy kisses it better. Most kids.

I spent my childhood envying those kids. I had friends, and I had good parents, but something was still missing. I hardly ever ran around, hardly ever cried except to get my way, and only laughed when people were expecting me to.

The other children hated me for being different. I’d be sitting alone on the grass, watching everyone during recess, and a few of them would come up to me. They, being raised with stranger danger, equated “different” with dangerous. In the security of their little cliques, they never left me to myself. All I wanted was to be alone. Was that too much to ask?

As a freshman in high school, being herded like livestock through the halls, it quickly became impossible to be alone. It had been so hard fighting against grade-schoolers that I gave in to the demands of society. The last thing I wanted was to be on the bad side of loud, anxious, angst-ridden teenagers.

I started making my first friends. At first I thought they were people like me: self-imposed outcasts. All these kids acting so different, they just wanted to fit in. They’d all been pushed away by everyone that a group that encouraged you to be a bit weird sounded wonderful. Eventually, it became one long pissing match everyone competing to be crowned weirdest of the group. Naturally, I left. They didn’t care, though. There were plenty of people strange enough to take my place.

It was about this time I started to become very depressed. I had spent most of my childhood watching how people act and interact, but didn’t understand the underlying nature of those interactions. Now that I was warming up to the people around me, I started noticing just how different I was. It went deeper than my desire to be alone. I thought emotions were all thought up until then. To me, sorrow was thinking “I wish that didn’t happen”, and that you cried until someone fixed it.

I really was different.

Everyone else loved, were happy, were sad, but I wasn’t. I could think about all those things, but I couldn’t feel them. I started wondering why I existed, why I had been born that way. I ended up coming to the conclusion that I was an abomination. I didn’t deserve to be alive with people who actually knew what it was like to be alive.

My enchantment with the human mind eventually lead me to psychedelics. I thought it was fascinating, the potential a handful of chemicals had to shatter someone’s ego and force them to pick up the pieces. Thanks to my new friends, I now had access to psilocybin mushrooms. I had no idea what the benign-looking fungus had in store for me.

On November 16, 2006, at 10:35 pm, I greedily ate the 3.5 grams I bought. At first, it was all waiting. It was an average Thursday night, lying in bed while my parents watched a movie in the next room over. I was documenting my experience on one of those tape recorders drunk writers use when they can’t be bothered to sit at their old and dusty typewriters. I spent the first hour or so talking about life. Gradually, everything became increasingly hilarious. I’d move my hand and chuckle at it. I started singing nonsense in to the tape recorder and laughing at my own voice.

Click. The tape recorder ran out of space for my madness. The click seemed to echo forever, to resonate through every thing. I realized I had just been truly happy, had really felt it, but it was suddenly gone again. In its place, I was overcome with fear. With pain.

Panicked, I went to my parents for help. I told them what I’d done. My mom, being the caring mother she is, gave me her mother’s embrace. My dad, being himself acquainted with psychedelics, sighed and started looking for a CD to calm me down. They took me to my room and laid me down, my mother trying to console me and my father playing the electronic music he had found. Somehow, I found the resolve to get through the experience. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, I told them “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.” They left, shutting the door and turning out the light behind them.

In the darkness, I had an odd sensation of floating above myself. Freed from my body, my soul wanted to float just above it, in the dark. I was confused for a moment, but soon after I felt like I was falling. Like invisible hands were pulling me down. Suddenly, it stopped. I couldn’t see anything around me. Dull moans and wails surrounded me. Something in the darkness was suffocating me, slowly turning me into nothing.

I drifted in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity. I thought for sure that I was dead, and that this was some sort of hell. I contemplated life and what had become of mine, what I could have done if I had another chance. I sometimes cried, because now I could actually feel everything. I missed my family, my friends, everyone.

I felt something approaching. It was a group of spirits shifting effortlessly through the Abyss. I soon found them inside my mind. I could feel them looking at everything I was, reading my life’s story like it was a book. I thought they’d finished, but I heard one of them speak.

“We like you. You should join us.”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

I woke up in my room with everything back in order. I breathed a sigh of relief, and got in the shower to get ready for school. I was thinking about what had happened the night before when I heard a commotion in the house. Suddenly, someone opened the shower door and threw me on the ground. A man with a shotgun, flanked by two others, shot me through my chest. I felt the pellets tear through my body and rip my heart to shreds. On my bathroom floor, I died while the three men just watched, like lions waiting for an antelope to die.

The spirit found me drifting through the darkness, whispering in my ear “Do you want to come with us now?

Defiantly, I said “No”. And, again, I awoke to the comforts of my bedroom. This time, aware of what might be going on, cautiously went through my morning routine. I made it all the way to the front doors of the high school. Relieved, I walked in without worrying about it. As soon as I entered, everyone in sight turned to look at me. Scared, I took a step back. They took this as a cue to rush me. They tackled me, tearing in to me like a pack of wolves.

The pattern repeated itself for what seemed like thousands of years. The little monster would ask me to join them. I’d say no. Some horrible thing would happen to me, and I’d wake up to that evil creature waiting for me. Eventually, I’d had enough. The demon told me: “This is going to keep happening until you give in.”

Angrily, I shouted “Fuck you. I’d rather kill myself than become one of you.”

I woke up in my room for real this time, still hallucinating. My body felt so heavy and clumsy, but I managed to roll over and bury my face in my pillows until I couldn’t breathe. After all the pain I’d gone through, it was just like falling asleep.

I now found myself somewhere new to this nightmare. Opening my eyes, I was greeted by the most beautiful moonlit sky I’ve ever seen. I looked down and saw that I was sitting on a massive stone pillar carved out of Lapis Lazuli, a dark blue rock with gold flecks in it. I looked out and saw the abyss, infinitely deep and infinitely black below me.

“Welcome” I heard a voice behind me, “to my home.” I turned around to see a raven perched on an inverted triangle, also carved out of lapis. It spoke again, before I could gather my thoughts. “You’ve lived your life as though it were a dream. It’s time you found the one thing that you live for.”

“What might that be?” I asked, still in a state of awe.

“Love. It’s the one thing that will keep you from giving up. You’ve spent your life rejecting it, but now it’s time to accept it. Don’t waste this second chance by denying it again.”

I was falling again. At first, I was sure I had gone back to the darkness. Imagine my surprise when I stopped on my back, in my bed, not breathing. The first thing I did was take a deep, panicked breath. Coughing and sputtering, I looked around. Everything was back to normal. There were a couple of visual distortions, but nothing to be scared of. It was 4 AM. After looking at the clock, I started chuckling softly.

After the years of isolation, pain, and resentment, I was finally free. Everything was so overwhelmingly beautiful, that for a minute I thought I was going to go insane trying to take it all in. I crawled between my covers and went to sleep smiling for the first time in my life.

Okay, so last night....

I posted an extremely personal and biographical essay about my childhood and mid-teenage years. I took it down because I didn't quite feel as comfortable with it as I thought I did.

SO, if you're interested, say something in the comments, and if enough of you want to read it, I'll r-r-r-repost it.

In other news, I went to bed early for once, which is why I'm posting so early. Felt good. Lots of sexy dreams, so the Zoloft hasn't robbed me of my overactive sex drive at least XD

By the way, if by reading any of my shit, you think you might be bipolar or depressed...SEE A DOCTOR NOW! Last night I had to listen to my mom fighting with her boyfriend for hours upon hours because he gets upset that she just won't leave him alone when he looks upset.

I open up to the people I'm close to and trust, (which is not my mom by the way, more on that later), but even with them, they know that if something's bothering me and I don't want to talk about it, I just want to be left alone for awhile. The space makes it easier to breathe, you know?

Although, there's a special lady out there who knows exactly how to calm me down without letting me suffer in solitude, and that's pretty damn awesome.

Again, if you guys want to read the autobiographical essay, I'll repost it.

Good morning! (or afternooon hehe)

Well, I woke up today feeling kind of shitty. Physically, though. I just slept so peacefully that I felt like I was rising from the dead XD

Last night I went over to my good friend Michael Benbretti's house. Aside from being one of the few people I explicitly trust with my life and would be willing to give him power of attorney should I be somehow incapacitated, he's also one of the most badass guitar players I've ever seen. He can literally play anything, even the type of stuff Buckethead plays. He maintains a studio in his basement, which is where he taught me the basics of music theory and even got me started on engineering, which I mostly taught myself when I got Propellerheads' Reason.

I'll post more music when I get some things organized.

In other news, I just read on another blog that the average breast size in Russia is a D cup or over. I have two comments on that. First, HOLY SHIT! Second...anyone up for a trip for boozing and beautiful, hardy women? Ha, good times.

In lieu of having any major observations about the world right now, I'll come up with a poem on the fly. How about a nice sonnet? Yeah...sonnets.

Flash echoing across the landscape,
A fleeting impression of a chaotic event,
New life taking shape,
The old is left to die without lament.

The newborn is doomed to the same fate,
As none can escape birth nor death,
This fact, many who fear do hate,
But the wise accept; enjoy every breath.

Life here after or oblivion awaiting,
Is no excuse to suffer while living,
Though the pressures of life make us think,
To open our arms to the end, welcoming.

The past nor the future is our savior,
We need only make the best of this moment.

.....

The reason I love writing sonnets is that, thanks to their structure, they always end up being something much different than I intended. Still, enjoy! I hope you're all doing great.

My laptop's getting some much needed pampering.

Well, I've had this machine for three years and, for the most part, it's served me loyally. Last night I discovered my warranty finally runs out in 2 months, so I decided to milk it to get this thing maintained and running like it was when it was brand new. I'm glad Dell are helpful with their customers, at least when they have a warranty XD

It also brings up a major problem we have with electronics. The fact that computers advance so quickly isn't much of a surprise, but the fact that a system that works perfectly well becomes obsolete on average two years after it was made is incredibly wasteful. We need to think of ways to make computers whose chips are easily repaired, recycled, and upgraded instead of throwing away all those valuable materials that go in to making a chipset and replacing it with another (until that one fails, anyway).

In other news, I'm trying to chew snus instead of smoke, although transitioning between the two isn't going so well. It's hard to sit here and stare at this screen for hours without getting up to take a break. I'm going to use some psychological trickery to get this done, though, such as getting up and going outside for 10-15 minutes when I pop in a snus. The trick is to make the new habit similar enough to the old one that eventually they both give you the same reward.

Besides, snus kicks ass over cigarettes. The Camel Frost stuff, especially, tastes like candy. Mmmm...

Pharmaceuticals sure are great, but...

There's one side effect of Zoloft that you don't hear much about in the press...it's a very serious side effect that greatly diminishes one's ability to enjoy a favorite pastime, especially among males.

That effect is...anorgasmia. For the laymen out there, it's the inability or diminished ability to have an orgasm. Let me tell you, I'm only a few days in to my treatment, and it's already hit me. Now I'm gonna have to find an hour or more each time I want to indulge, so to speak.

TMI...hahaha

Thank the wonderful scientists who invented good lube, because otherwise, I'm sure millions of people who are on these antidepressants would be beating themselves raw...in more way than one.

I had a productive day

Even though I woke up at 1ish today, I was very productive today. I cleaned and rearranged my room, moving the bookshelf I use as a dresser in to my walk-in closet and pushing my bed over where it used to be.

Now that I have more space around my pseudo-desk, I'm now sitting on an actual chair instead of sitting on the edge of my bed. Hopefully this will keep me from laying down in bed with my laptop like I've been doing ever since I moved out of my dad's house and in to my mom's. Even if I wanted to, I use my stereo for my laptop's sound through my audio interface, so I can't just grab my laptop and go to the other side of my room.

So, all in all it was a good day. As far as observations go, I've been watching Nurse Jackie, and have a few comments about health care. It's really sad that so many people with health problems can't afford treatment because they have no insurance or their provider decides not to pay for what they need. These people are making money off of our blood, and it's sickening. That's why I support socialized medicine (gasp). I don't know how some people can justify letting people suffer so much just because they can't afford medical care.

I could go off on that for hours, but I won't! I hope you're all doing well.