Gladiatorways

I have never been overly hesitant about sharing my personal struggles with masses of anonymous people. I uploaded an incredibly personal video on my channel a while back, walking through my depression and how it effects my life every day. It was raw, and yes, it was risky. People on the internet - many of them anyway - are not nice, and worse some are predatory. Showing weakness, being real, being vulnerable online invites ridicule more often than not.

With that being said, writing and speaking honestly about my struggles are very nearly my only form of healthy catharsis. I benefit greatly from the act of pouring out my heart, negativity and anonymous ugliness be damned.

It is with that in mind that I share this with all of you. Two weeks ago I lost a very important person in my life, arguably in many ways the MOST important person in my life. He was my therapist of almost 5 years, and a man who, quite literally, saved my life. Were it not for him, I would be a dead man. Reaching out to him as a last act of desperation is what kept me from committing suicide. I can only give you my word that the statement I just made was not hyperbolic, overblown or otherwise exaggerated.

I’m an intelligent guy. I’m no Mensa candidate, but I have a decent head on my shoulders. This man spoke to me from a position of authority that absolutely humbled me. His knowledge of my illness was beyond encyclopedic. Over the long course of our association I came to respect the man more than I’ve ever respected another human being. With that respect came trust. Pure, unadulterated (perhaps naive) trust. Once our relationship was established, if he told me to do something I fucking did it. No hesitation, no skepticism. Over the years of working with him, I came, naturally, to love him as I love a member of my own family.

My mother called me two weeks ago and told me he was dead. We had gone through a period of hiatus in meeting due to personal problems on his end and the distance between us (he was based in my old home of California, I am in Texas). Things had been rocky with our schedule. He texted me 4 days before he passed, asking how I was. I did not answer him.

Still in abject shock from the news, my mother told me that there were things about his passing and the months leading up to it that I needed to know. Before I go on, it should be said that this man had, at one point or another, helped EVERYONE in my family. He saw my mother, my sister and father (albeit briefly), my stepfather and my ex wife. He was a lifeline for everyone I knew and loved for decades.

I will not, out of respect for the people involved (and some lingering respect for him and his family) go into specifics. Suffice it to say that, in his final weeks, he violated EVERY principal that he held sacred as a mental health professional. Part of establishing trust with me involved detailed conversations about his role as a therapist. Despite my genuine love for him, and the high regard in which I held him, he would never allow us to be friends. There were no casual lunches, no dinners at my home, no “Hey, come over and watch the game.” That separation, he told me time and again, was VITAL to his role, and to violate it would be utterly destructive.

I trusted those words, and in his final weeks of life he violated every one of them in the most inappropriate and destructive way possible. Due to death records being sealed to all but direct family members, I cannot say with absolute certainty that he killed himself, but lets just say that I am almost completely positive that he did, due to overwhelming circumstantial evidence. I would be absolutely shocked to find out that he died of natural causes. The coincidence would be too absurd to believe. 

Two days ago, I took a MASSIVE dose of a benzodiazepine called klonopin. Those of you that noticed my slurred speech on the last episode of the Drunken Peasants now know why. The dose I took was so dangerously large that, after sleeping an entire night I woke the next day and still had trouble walking and talking normally. I have a history of prescription drug abuse, though it has been over a decade since my last run in with it. I cannot promise that it will be my last, but I can promise that I am done with it for now. I do not want to endanger my life, my relationships or my job by hiding pain behind pills.

That said, I am devastated, not just at the loss of one of the most important friends in my life, but with the anger I feel towards him. I feel like a dupe, a sucker and a credulous idiot. But, as this very man used to say to me “Anger is pain. It’s just easier to express.” The truth is, I miss him greatly, and feel lost without him. I also feel lost attempting to dig through all of the things he told me over the long 5 years of sessions and puzzle out what was genuine and what was bullshit. This lifelong battle with Depression has taken so much from me, and he was the bright spot in all of that darkness and self doubt. To lose him to the the very act he saved me from would be poetic if it weren’t so heartbreaking to me.

I think that many people assume I came by my position to abstain from voting frivolously - that it is a position born of apathy or “edginess” whatever that means this week.

In reality, it is a position that I’ve carefully considered all my adult life. I have a strong contrarian streak, I’ll admit. Chalk it up to my upbringing. Both of my parents instilled in me, by example, a desire to walk away from the crowd rather than with it. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown wary of the “pleasant fictions” we tell ourselves to get through the day, the week, the year - and there are so many of them if you bother to look. 

Voting is one of them, perhaps the biggest, and as such it was the hardest one for me to shed. After all, what power do we have over the state of things if not our vote? The answer is not pleasant nor easy, but I care about the truth of things more than I care about false hope, comfort or stability. Your vote means nothing, the same as mine, and this current election cycle underlines that fact so boldly that it shocks me to see people ignore it.

Whether we agree or not, who among you would be bold enough to look at these two candidates and say that you see the will of the American people? Having lived through the stolen 2000 election and now the stolen 2016 democratic primary, who could possibly argue for lining up at your polling place to take part in what passes for your sacred democratic trust?

 If ANY of us did the things Hillary has done - lying under oath, bribery, election fraud, egregious breaches of national security, to name a few - we’d be in fucking jail. We all know that. And before you label me a salty Bernie supporter: ANY support I lent that man dissipated the day he bent the knee and kissed the Clinton ring. Bernie - at the end of things - was just part of the problem. He had an opportunity - many in fact - to stand on principle and, at the VERY LEAST, take a stand against the greed, cronyism, and outright thievery that has overtaken American Politics. Instead, he settled, like most of the rest of us, for empty tradition. He rolled over on EVERY person who supported him. Fuck Bernie.

That being said, who really believed he had a chance in the first place? Before the DNC leaks surfaced it was clear that there was something rotten in Denmark, now it’s absolutely irrefutable. Your elections are decided for you. Father and Son presidents. Husband and Wife presidents. Malia Obama 2032. Jeb Bush Jr. 2070. 

All of this without even mentioning your “other choice” - a duplicitous orange multi-millionaire / ex reality T.V. show star / failed steak and board game salesman. Need I even say more on that account? “WHAT ABOUT THE THIRD PARTIES, PAUL?” What about them? They are another pleasant fiction to be discarded. A little band-aid for those of you who can’t bring yourself to vote for one of the prepackaged candidates. No thanks. I’ll pass, but hey - if voting Johnson or Stein gets you through till 2020, have at it.

Is change possible? I’d love to play the optimist and say “yes”. I really do want that to be the answer. I’d love to wrap this up with a …”BUT, if we act now we can turn it around!” feel-good pep talk. That would make me a liar. When a multiple felon can stand for high office contested only by a man like Trump, what remedy could there possibly be? Do you hang your hat on the “next generation” of voters, themselves the victims of one of the most broken, useless education systems in the western world? What about mass protests? Have you not seen how those turn out these days, here and all over the globe? The writing is on the wall.

I won’t be a complete doomsayer. I can’t tell the future. The truth is I don’t know if there is any coming back at this point. The path, if there is one at all, is beyond my ability to see it.  I’m not usually a betting man, but my money is on “slow, tortuous decline.” Either way, lining up for your “I VOTED!” sticker isn’t the answer, nor is telling yourself sweet little lies about the state of things.