Late at Night

I am feeling emotional in a totally undefineable way. I can feel so deeply and profoundly but I can't put a name to it or even really describe it. I suppose there is value in trying. It is a journey rather than a destination. 

Sadness is definitely in the mix. There's also an exhausted sense of dejection mixed with the feeling of a boot pressing down on the very pit of my soul. At the same time, I feel joy. There are things that are so beautiful and so wonderful, the thought of them almost make me weep with happiness. Everything is a swirling mass of raw emotion with no language attached. 

I suppose this is partly what has been itching my subconscious. My dreams have been imageless, yet broody. I feel an emotional reaction but there is absolutely no context. It would be easier if I could attach images to what I was feeling. If there was a narrative to play back and analyze. 

Maybe the narrative is just an interpretation. Maybe it would cloud the true message. Maybe my brain has absolutely no idea how to interpret what I'm feeling. Maybe that is okay. 

I'm feeling so lost in the midst of profound clarity. Caught in a hall of mirrors staring at reflections of reflections. Nothing is real yet everything is painfully real. 

I wish I had better words. 

Somewhat Confessional

 

        Today I climbed up to essentially the top of town. The walk up was a nice way to get out some pent up energy and helped clear my mind a bit.  I thought about what I would write and now that I'm sitting here, I realize I didn't figure out much. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the gig I had on Saturday.  It was an absolutely beautiful service and a true celebration of life.  I'm overjoyed that even though the event was sad, I helped people feel better.  Music truly is magical and I am honored that people think that I do it justice.  DJs are trusted to provide the soundtrack to people's memories. To me, that feels like a huge responsibility, one I take very seriously. Sure, there's a lot of fucking around and I'm the first one to insert something smart assed in the mix but there is always a time and a place. 

    As a kid, I was always taught that everything had a time and a place and that you succeed in life sometimes just by being at the right place at the right time. There's an art to being able to read the proverbial room and know when to show up and where. I feel though, sometimes, that it happens on a subconscious level.  Call it instinct, gut feeling, vibes, whatever, but it really does feel like it comes from someplace outside of my conscious awareness. 

    It is odd.  I feel like I have such a deep and profound connection to the soul of the universe.  I feel as if I have touched the chaos of the divine being. There is a oneness I share with existence and time and that I hold everything that was, is and ever will be within myself. At the same time, nothing really makes a whole lot of sense.  I am bound by this meat brain and it's incredibly limited software. Sometimes, this manifests as suicidal thoughts.  I can't endure another moment of not being able to grasp what I can feel is so painfully obvious.  I understand suicide, not because I know what drives people to it exactly, but because I know how easily the mind gets to that point. 

    I almost took myself out.  I have no idea what conspired to save me but I did live. For the longest time, I didn't want to talk about it.  It was in the past, it was a manifestation of something stupid, I am "over" it, it wasn't that big of a deal.  Truth is, it is a point of trauma that has stuck with me.  I need to talk about it and process what almost killing myself did to me.  I need to contemplate the what if. I need to remind myself of all the absolutely beautiful things I have experienced because I didn't die by my own hand. 

    I guess a good start is to put the facts of the event out there.  It was the year I turned 19.  I was in a relationship with a girl I had met at college while at the same time dating another girl locally. For this I feel like a total asshole, which was honestly a contributing factor if I'm being totally truthful. I really have no idea why I kept on with the local girl.  She made my life hell and I was constantly wondering if I had any value in her eyes.  I was obsessed with the attention, though. The hot was satisfying enough to endure the cold at least to me.  My perception was definitely skewed by inexperience. 

    I was living at home and working for the state.  Home life was strained, as I had dropped out of military school and my family was sorely disappointed.  I was disappointed in myself but for the wrong reasons. The job was miserable and not at all what I saw myself doing as a career but it was money.  I was living out of various cheap shit motels for four days out of the week and only socializing with my gruff co-worker (this guy made talking to rocks seem interesting) and phone calls to my girlfriend which were limited because at the time, long distance calling actually cost money. 

    It was the last week of August.  It was hot as hell and the hotel I was staying in was absolute shit. I spent the last little bit of cash I had on a calling card from some sketchy convenience store. I dialed one of the few numbers I had memorized.  I remember being surprised the girlfriend actually picked up.  Usually it was her mother who picked up the phone. I don't remember the exact details of the conversation.  The gist though, was that she didn't want to be together any more because she wasn't sure if she was actually a lesbian. That our entire relationship had been an experiment that she wasn't really happy with. 

    My entire identity was called into question.  At the time, I wasn't exactly sure I was a lesbian (I wasn't) but I knew I was more than just some sort of experimental fling.  I had spent an entire year in college being told that everything that made me who I am was evil, wrong and something to be shunned. My entire self-worth was tied up in two women, one who realistically should not have been my emotional support (totally not fair at all to her) and the other who really didn't love me, she just liked the idea of being with me because it pissed off the religious establishment. When it became more of a hassle than what it was worth, she dropped me like a hot rock. 

    I remember her asking me if I was okay with things.  I lied.  I said expected it, and that I knew it wasn't going to last.  I hung up with a half-hearted "see you around." I didn't sleep that night.  I stared at the stained ceiling, formulating a plan of action.  I wished I would die right then and there but I knew that wouldn't happen. The next day, I spent the drive home in silence. My co-worker noted that I was silent even for me.  I collected my paycheck and cashed it at some bullshit casino. I bought a 50 count bottle of Tylenol PM and stashed it in my glove box.  I don't recall if I spoke to my parents.  I do know I did go home at some point to grab my car but if I talked to them before things went down, I'm not sure. 

    I drove up into the hills where I spent a lot of my youth.  It is a magical area and also a place where you could disappear and no one would know.  I ate the entire bottle of pills while blasting Cranberries - Zombie as loud as my sound system would go. I remember laughing and sobbing at the same time. I remember thinking "What the fuck did I just do?" As I felt the pills take hold, I thought that if I was going to die, she should fucking know about it.  I drove off the hill in a haze and ended up at her church. I don't know why I knew she would be there.  It wasn't a normal church day.  

    Next thing I knew I was puking on her shoes.  Everything became sort of a blacked out blur at that point.  I woke up in the hospital as my stomach was getting pumped and I have this vague recollection of a doctor telling me that I was probably going to die anyway.  I'm fairly sure I said "Well...fuck me." and then I was gone again.  There was a brief moment of clarity where my brother called me a "fucking idiot." 

    I fully regained consciousness in the behavioral health unit.  The head psychiatrist was a fat, balding guy that diagnosed me with being "female and emotional" and we did yoga every day.  I managed to be helpful by talking to other patients and developing a rapport just by listening. I tend to do that.  I had a session scheduled with an outpatient therapist but that fell through.  I briefly was on an anti-depressant medication but that didn't do anything good. The topic was avoided by just about everyone.  No one was interested in hearing about it and I wasn't interested in talking about it.  The wound never went away.  The trauma of being in the hospital never went away.  The sensation of death never went away. 

    I have nightmares about feeling myself fading out of existence.  Nightmares about how much stomach pumping actually hurts. Nightmares of people just not giving a fuck that I almost died. Avoiding it isn't helping. 

    Telling this story is the first step towards healing. 

Meditation to a Groove

Music has literally saved my life. Music is the first thing I remember. I'm convinced that I started my love affair with music while I was still in the womb. It helps that mom is just as in love with music as I am and that I was exposed to music even before I was born. There's something to be said about music being in a person's DNA too. Both my parents are musical people as well as my grandparents as far as I know. When I was younger, music was an escape from the chaos that makes up my existence. I had the usual pressures of childhood to contend with. Bullying, trying to navigate through school while being "different" and all that crap. I also had to deal with being pathologised and being whispered about behind closed doors. Even though I didn't fully understand the scope of this, it still hurt. Music made the hurt a lot more tolerable and for a few minutes at a time, I could just lose myself in a song and not really think about anything else.

Through high school, I shared my love of music with others and connected to people deeply through mutual musical interests. I developed a love of the art of the mixtape (mix CD if you want to be technical) and that's where I think I got the DJing bug although I didn't know it at the time. Eventually, music became digital and I had access to a medium that I had never thought was possible. Digital music is amazing. You can have enough songs as not to repeat one for a year in a small physical space. I don't think anything is really lost with digital music for the most part and the advantage of easy access usually outweighs quality issues.


Throughout the years, many people have suggested meditation as a way to stay grounded. Traditional meditation techniques don't really work well for me. My brain just isn't wired that way. What I have figured out is a way to meditate through music. At first, it involved just listening to a mix of music and allowing my mind to go blank. That still works surprisingly well. Throughout the years, as mixing music has gotten easier through practice, I've managed to get into that meditative head space while mixing music. It is quite therapeutic. I've noticed even if I am at my lowest point, a good mix session can bring me out of it. It is interesting recording these sessions too, as I can play them back and work through any emotion I might have been feeling at the time.


Sometimes I forget that I've trained my brain in this way. I have to keep telling myself that I have this awesome relationship with music for a reason. Yes, it's absolutely wonderful and amazing that people enjoy the music I mix but that isn't why I do it primarily. I have to routinely let my brain escape and mix for the pleasure of mixing, not just do it for scripted shows. Don't get me wrong, my podcast is really fun to do but if I just confine myself to that format, some of the therapy in it is lost.


Here's to meditation to a groove. Hopefully it helps others as much as it helps me.

The S Word

I read something the other day that said that suicide is killing more young people than the virus. Suicide has always been a problem, especially amongst people who suffer from PTSD. In recent times, people are starting to at least acknowledge that it's something that anyone can suffer from, not just those exposed to combat. I suppose that trauma is a type of combat, just as much as combat is a type of trauma.

I've always had vague thoughts about killing myself. These thoughts are especially strong when I'm feeling like nothing is worth it and that no one cares about me. I know intellectually these things are not true but with everyone so caught up in the right now, it is incredibly hard to feel acknowledged. It's also difficult to see purpose in my life. Everything is chaotic and everyone is scrambling to find a place. It is both comforting and painful knowing that I'm not alone.

The paradox of the situation is that as long as I'm thinking about killing myself, I won't do it. The second it becomes impulse is when I should worry. It's pushing the limit, I'll admit. I'd ask myself why now but the answer is pretty fucking obvious. I feel like I was close to healing. That I was finally closing up some old wounds. In some ways, this is still true. On the other hand, the deepest cuts are the ones making me bleed out. 

I don't know if anyone can save me. There are people that will certainly try. I'm going to ask for some reassurance and try not to feel guilty about it. Hopefully it will help. 

Nothing Seems Accurate

 

    I don't even know where to start with this. I'm incredibly agitated and have been for several days. It's an odd combination of anxiety and depression symptoms, at least physically. It doesn't feel like that emotionally though. It's getting harder and harder to pick out what individual emotions I am experiencing. Everything seems to coalesce into a gigantic ball of irritating that nags and tugs at every fiber in my brain. Sleep is dreamless and just a continuation of what I feel when I am awake. I can't seem to think through all this void. I wish it was a lack of emotion, honestly. At least that way, I could maybe apply some logic to it. I really feel an excessive amount of everything, both good and bad along with an almost overwhelming desire to just shut things up on a permanent basis.

    I have visions of killing myself. Ways that it would be incredibly easy and ways that would be completely impossible and are overly illogical. Some of the most absurd ones have the greatest appeal. For example, casing a pawn shop and stealing a gun in the dead of night. There's a reason why I won't allow myself to posses a firearm. I have a feeling that I would have already shot myself had I had easy or even semi easy access. I'm also glad I don't really drive much and when I do have access to a vehicle, I'm surrounded by people that would make sure I wasn't doing something irrational. Also, I honestly wouldn't want to fuck over my partner by destroying his only vehicle.

    I'm oddly pissed off at the whole notion that if I did kill myself, it would get labeled as a COVID suicide. Fucking hell...as if I have control over what goes on the paperwork if I die but still. I don't want some pinhead asshole deciding that the reason I took myself out was because of the cause de jour. This is a long standing ailment, a fundamental part of my being. Likely caused by the original trauma of being born. Hell, even my conception could be considered traumatic. Do you suffer with the effects of a trauma that happened when you were no more than a clump of cells? Interesting question.

    I find myself facing the strong feeling that nothing really exists. That the entire scope of what my senses tell me are just lies. That everyone I interact with is lying in some way. Of course, this comes off as insulting, as if I am personally attacking their integrity and honesty. I'm not, really. I'm questioning my basic perception of the world around me and if I actually exist. Maybe that's why I want to hurt myself? To prove that something is real, to point out any tiny thing that tells me that everything I perceive isn't some sort of elaborate hoax? This isn't a new agitation, not by a long shot. I've felt this way in varying degrees for as long as I remember. I guess current events are triggering these feelings in a deep way.

    Is there a name for this condition? Part of me really doesn't give two fucks if there is. Doesn't matter what you call it or if there's some sort of diagnostic checklist I fill. I don't think it is anything that can be medicated away. Lord knows that I've tried. Perception isn't a "mood" anyway so it isn't as if I can stabilize it. I've entertained the thought of just eating all of the medications I have just to see what happens. I'd probably survive as my cellular survival instinct is stronger than anything my brain decides to do. In a weird way, that pisses me off.

    I don't hate life. I'm confused by it, hurt by it, completely befuddled and angered by it but I don't hate it. The tapestry is interesting and beautiful. Bouncing off of things keeps me interested and curious at the very least. At the same time, I'm exhausted. Physically, not really. Mentally, I feel like I'm walking up hill dragging a boulder. Everything is weak. Just when I feel like I can't keep pulling, I keep pulling anyway. What the fuck for? I have animals and people that rely on me, this is certainly true. But if nothing really exists anyway, what is the point?

    I'm relying a lot on the external perspective of others. I keep telling myself that at least these people are grounded in the mass hallucination enough to point me in the right direction. Enough people are on the same wavelength, I'm at least partially convinced that there is something to hold on to. For the longest time, the thought of everything being nothing was kept at bay oddly by reality too. I was focused on surviving, on figuring out the song and dance. It wasn't fun at all a lot of the time and it caused me stress but I wasn't thinking about how nothing feels real.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
What have I become?

What have I become, indeed. I don't know if I've "become" anything I wasn't before. Maybe I understand it better? Sure as fuck doesn't feel like it. A lot of people I know take comfort in the faith that there is something bigger than us out there. I take comfort in the stories, in the trappings of ritual but do I think the universe is anything more than entropy manifest? Not really. The chaos is only contained because of some sort of mass agreement that no one asked for but it exists anyway. When did this start? When did the apes develop self-aware consciousness? Was it a sudden flipping of a switch or was it so gradual that no one noticed it until it just was?

    When it comes to suicide, everyone encourages getting help.  Talking to someone about it and maybe consider inpatient treatment. Total bullshit, at least in my case.  There is absolutely nothing any doctor could do for this.  There's no medication that will erase my thoughts. OK, there's plenty of medication that will erase my thoughts but nothing that will erase the emotions behind them. I'll be spinning in a circle with a crushing wave of emotions and absolutely no way to conceptualize or articulate them. I know from experience that existing like that is no help. Also, medical doctors focus on my physical ailments and assume that this whole thing is caused by some sort of body chemical imbalance and/or some physical abnormality.  Even when things were in "proper" balance, I'd still feel the same way. I suppose if I were stuck in a hospital, I couldn't harm myself in theory. If anything, though, I'd figure out a way just to prove to people that their high and mighty sense of control is flawed.  

    Killing myself IN a psychiatric hospital would be an interesting way to martyr myself.  Really an asinine way to prove a point but who listens to anyone otherwise? 

    Fickity fuck. How do you rule disorder? I don't have that answer.  Maybe you don't.  Maybe even the tiniest sense of control and order is just an illusion. I'd love to be plugged into it but only because ignorance is sometimes bliss.  Stop the ride, I want to get off. 

One of those What the Fuck dreams...

I was happily playing on a beach on my "home" planet. I've had dreams of this place before. Purple sand with a jade blue ocean and twin suns in the sky with the call of large, black seabirds in the distance. They sound like a cross between a seagull and a heron and look like huge pelicans. I'm enjoying being lost in the moment, the cold ocean water washing over my feet and the heat of the day on my skin. It's warm but not uncomfortable. There's a lovely breeze carrying various smells.

Suddenly, the birds stop and there's a moment of eerie quiet before the air is filled with the deafening roar of some sort of machine. Kind of sounds like an impossibly large engine ate a power transformer. I'm instantly scared and I run in a random direction. Next thing I know. I am being picked up by a big metal claw. It clamps on to my shoulder and neck. It feels like pliers digging into my skin. I'm lifted on towards this flying rectangle. It's a mass of pipes, wires and metal bits. A hatch opens on the bottom and I am pulled into the darkness.

I'm tossed into a room with what feels like a metal floor. It is impossibly dark or I am blind, I'm not sure which. I lay on the cold surface, my shoulder and neck aching. I can feel the slightest bit of blood trickling down my arm. I smell it more than feel it, really. The copper smell mixes with the lingering scent of some sort of disinfectant. I start to feel light-headed and a bit nauseated.

A bright light appears out of nowhere. It is incredibly hot and bright. Where I was once blinded by darkness, I am now blinded by light. I feel multiple hands. I am pulled from the floor onto some sort of examination table. I feel the paper on my backside. I'm not sure when or how I became undressed. I feel a knife cut me on my chest, right where a scar is in the waking world. The wound makes me cry out but before any sound could escape, a gloved hand clamps over my mouth. I feel some sort of tube pushed into the hole...and that's when the cat started to bite my toes.

I'm not sure if she knew I was having some sort of nightmare or was just being a little shit, but I'm glad she woke me up. Not sure I wanted to know how the rest of the situation played out.

Fractured Reality

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is feeling a sense of disconnection from reality.  The state of the world is so ridiculous, the mind can't be blamed for checking out at least a little bit. Sometimes, this makes me incredibly sad.  I weep, for what exactly, I can't say.  I also find myself laughing at everything too.  I'm the type to laugh at a funeral, though.  There are people who find my habit of using humor as a deflection annoying at best.  Oftentimes, I am seen as insulting and offensive. I understand where a joke could hurt, especially if is made at the expense of a person. However, I don't think joking about an absurd situation is particularly offensive. The world is a dumpster fire. Arguably, there isn't a single point in human history where the world hasn't been some sort of trash fire. I think seeing humor in the darkness helps us make sense out of the pain.  Gallows humor always has a place. 

Along those lines, I feel like I am stuck inside my own head a lot more. Now that I'm not fighting for basic survival (feels weird not struggling as much even as things objectively get worse in general), I find myself thinking about the internal struggle.  I have always dealt with some crossed wires in my brain.  In between spending childhood being told that my perceptions were either fake or dangerous coupled with the fact that basic survival takes precedence over everything else, I have spent way too long pushing these things to the side.  Ignoring something doesn't address or solve it, really.  It is interesting hearing myself describe what life inside my head is like. At the same time, there's a lot of fear because I am used to people telling me I'm either stupid or crazy. I am starting to come to terms with the crazy label being incredibly harmful. I have really internalized it and it is going to take a lot of unpacking to undo the damage. 

It really is a double edged thing at this point. I have to not only redefine my identity in a lot of ways, I also have to integrate these things back into myself. I've spent far too long thinking of my mental particulars as disorders even though oftentimes they help more than they hinder.  Sure, some of it is a total pain in the ass but having experienced life without them, I can honestly say that I'd much rather deal with navigating some pitfalls as opposed to crippling absence and existence in a void. Fuck what conventional "wisdom" says is normal. Even medicated, I can't hang with that shit.  I might as well focus on embracing myself as a whole person and not feel bad because I don't fit in even as a fractured soul.