SuperMassiveBloghole

I spent my last night in New York doing laundry. 

Out of bed around noon. I answered texts. Read GQ in a bubble bath and listened to Sturgill. I moisturized a new tattoo. Cursed the rain outside. Grinded 3.5 grams and rolled 8 joints. Snapped it and regretted the caption.

I smoked half of one and sprayed heavy duty febreze. The asian guy on the second floor across the street left his curtains open today. His french bulldog was on his bed with a second dog I didn’t know. They started fucking. I tried to snap it but it was blurry from the zoom. The rain didn’t help either. I put on proper clothes but forgot underwear. Angel at the front desk printed my lease surrender agreement for me. I got it notarized at the UPS store on 7th. My biggest achievement of the day. The rain stopped. I finished the half joint and stopped by woops for a latte. This peanut butter cookie wouldn’t quit, so I bagged one for later. I sat next to a table of two stunning 20-whatever year olds and pretended to read my surrender agreement. The skinnier one who won’t age as well said, “and he was just so otherworldly interested in where I was going when he saw me on the train.” Normally her high creep awareness would ward off such a guy, but something about him was just different, apparently. She excused herself to the wc and left her darker haired friend in hunter green boots and a quilted blue turtleneck alone at the table. A beat later I walked across the room to trash my cup. Walking back, I loved every one of the ten seconds it took her to reapply lip balm at the table. “‘I leave New York in 24 hours.’ Is that more reason to fuck a guy or tell a guy fuck off?” Sorry. It only happened in my head. I walked out into the cold. Angel handed me a package. New razors from dsc. I dropped off my package and papers. Madden was facing the door, completely passed out on my bed. I snuck back out and took the elevator to eight. A cold wet roof.

I should start with the fact that I’m not laughing. I could rattle off every offense in this segment, but I’ll start by bowing to the cultural cesspool where Jesse Watters has a house and asshole emeritus status and acknowledge that he was going for laughs. He meant no harm and “it was all in good fun.” It sure was.

I assume people watch Fox News for their version of the truth: the plainspoken, black-and-white variety that resonates with the common man of Real America. So, if you’re going to be funny, be funny. If you’re going to be racist, call the slanty-eyed chinks what they are and ask if it’s the Year of the Dragon. What I won’t suffer is a stream of soft serve bullying masked as comedy.

I get it. You’re a daily news program double majoring in Entertainment and Shittiness. So when the Republican presidential nominee mentions “China” 12 times in the debate, your first thought is to head to Chinatown for reactions. If Trump had mentioned “racist shameless pieces of shit” 12 times, I’d head to Fox News HQ for reactions too. First thoughts are fun.

But I’m not angry. I learned long ago it’s a waste of energy to admonish, much less acknowledge, a fool. A childhood fraught with bullies will do that. So I’m not going to extrapolate this to find some broader meaning. I just wanted to state, for the record, that I didn’t laugh. Not even once. And if there’s one thing my centuries of Kung Fu training and Sun Tzu discipleship has taught me, it’s to hit ‘em where it hurts most, and the best way to defeat a clown is to tell him he’s not funny. 

Well lately things have been a little complicated Quality of life has got me down Well sex is cheap and the talk is overrated And the boys and me still working on the sound

A little happiness, a little love was all I wanted Sure as Hell thought I'd found it but I was wrong She left my heart feelin' taunted and my memories all haunted But it's her I have to thank for all my songs So every day I'm smokin' my brain hazy All I can do to keep from goin' crazy But the paranoia is slowly creepin' in I keep drinkin' myself silly Only way for this hillbilly And I thank God for this here life of sin

Every morning when I rise look in the mirror and despise The sight of everything and all that I've become The level of my medicating some might find intimidating But that's alright cause' it don't bother me none

Last January, I don’t remember the exact date, I began to feel the early pangs of a severe depression coming on. Over the next few weeks, my mental health spiraled beyond my control until I found myself catatonic in bed one evening contemplating suicide. I was never in any real danger of actually going through with it, but for the first time, suicide seemed a reasonable option. I felt pain and I felt worthless and felt even worse burdening others with my baggage. So I thought the sensible thing to do would be to eliminate myself from the equation. I don’t need to explain how backwards and wrong this is to any clear headed person and that’s why it best conveys how fucked up my brain is when depressed.

Since that time a year ago, I’ve sought help and learned a lot. I’ve discovered my depressive tendencies almost always originate from my compulsive need to please others. I’ve spent a lifetime denying my own feelings; choosing to defer to the emotional needs of others instead. I shape-shift to be whoever I think the other person wants me to be and in doing so, never developed a healthy sense of self. This pattern of suppressing and stacking what I want and feel eventually grew into a mountainous weight too heavy to bear. If you ever wonder why depression keeps you in bed unkempt in sweatpants and tears, it’s because there is a physical weight pressing down on your heart, pinning you. It is an overwhelming cloud of molasses hovering over self worth and reason and it holds you hostage.

When I’m depressed I think a billion thoughts at once – the majority of which make me feel bad about myself. I feel alone and unlovable. I feel undesirable and unworthy of empathy or the genuine care of others. I feel old and unaccomplished. Deservedly ignored and overlooked. Even when I seek help and talk about how I feel, my thoughts inevitably turn to how trite and selfish and weak I must appear to the other person – even when that person is a trained professional I am literally paying to listen to my problems. These thoughts are only exacerbated when I open up to friends and family. I feel utterly undeserving of their love and feel sorry for wasting their time with my emotional bullshit. My depression is a form of extreme self-awareness coupled with extreme self-denial, a toxic brew of neediness and feeling bad for feeling needy. And so the only answer is to shut down: a cry for help that simultaneously rejects any help offered.

This isn’t an easy thing to explain. I haven’t been depressed for about four months now. I feel clear-headed and healthy. I’m focused in ways I’ve never been and I feel a sense of victory in making peace with the darker sides of me. But last night, while lying in bed, I was completely blindsided with negative thoughts creeping in again. They were familiar and comfortable: I am lonely, unlovable and worthless. I am without talent, value or any redeeming qualities as a person. Anyone who loves me only does so out of their own goodness – I am their charity case. I am so weak and pathetic – nipping at the heels of 33 years-old, wrestling with the angst of an 8th grader.

The good news is, whatever progress I’ve made in the last year is making a difference now. I feel disconnected from the depression in a way that’s brand new to me. It’s almost as if I have a bird’s eye view of this black cloud as it launches its assault on my psyche. I see what it’s doing now. It starts with a subtle drizzle of negativity triggered by an arbitrary nothing – who knows why the rain starts when it does? This drizzle escalates to a steady downpour which aims to spiral into a torrential storm, a deluge of self-hate and fatalism strong enough to kill a man.

I remind myself it’s all chemical. It’s brain chemistry. I could point to a thousand things that may have triggered the latest bout of negative thoughts, but in reality, there is no real catalyst. There is no more relevant a reason than why wintry weather gives some a common cold and others pneumonia. Depression just happens. It just happens because that’s exactly the way it wants it. A dark thought creeps in here and there, a tinge of loneliness catches your chest and before you know it you just feel bad for no reason and every reason.

But I have weapons to fight back now. I have an umbrella for the rain and a bunker for the storm. The most important weapon being knowledge: I know who wins the war. I do. I know the storm will pass. I know I’m capable of being happy and free and clear in ways that affirm life. I see depression and its schemes and no longer feel powerless to stop it. I tell the bad thoughts to go fuck themselves. I tell my best friend I’m feeling low. I write and try to focus my mind. I call my sister and hear myself say the stupid shit I’m thinking out loud and realize it’s stupid shit but she never makes me feel stupid. I don’t deny and I don’t pretend. I don’t laugh things off and say I’m fine. I stay present and honest about what I think and feel and this gives me more than a puncher’s chance. It gives me a healthy separation from my real self and the depressed shell that sometimes stands in my place.

I have confidence I can beat depression every time it wants to fight, but confidence isn’t strength. I still have an underlying fear one day I may be completely overwhelmed by the familiar foe. That one day I might lose. And this is why it’s called mental health, because it requires upkeep. Preventive measures as well as intervening ones. I have telltale signs: weight gain, laziness, insomnia, and a longview that none of this will ever change so what’s the point? But I’ve lived the other side now and know how wrong I am. I don’t have to be fat, tired and hopeless, I’m capable of being the opposite of all these things. So how do I fight depression? I remember life in times of peace and believe that version of me to be more true than the delusion of worthlessness I feel currently. But don’t get me wrong, it’s a fucking fight. It’s a battle with a familiar foe that knows every weakness and vulnerability. Like fighting an opponent who knows my mother's maiden name and every insecurity.

Last year, two weeks before my depression sank in, I felt more confident, happy and powerful than I’d ever felt my entire life. So you can imagine my confusion when I found myself listless, suicidal and unable to get out of bed one morning. My confusion last night was no different. I’ve come so far and feel clarity and power like never before, yet here I was again, facing the familiar foe. It was the same but different.

BB King died tonight. I feel a lot, but I’m stuck on the notion of beginnings and endings. 

I’ll never forget my first concert of his. A seven-piece band played a standard 12-bar, then with the music still blaring, one of the horn players approached the mic and gave a classic old school introduction, just like the beginning of Live at the Regal: “Ladies and Gentleman how about a nice, warm round of applause for the King of the Blues, Mr. B.B. King!” BB walked centerstage Lucille in hand and banged out a single, sustained note over the band. One note. He claimed the throne. He reminded the seven guys in the band why they were “the seven guys in the band.”

I always come back to this thought of music as a mirror to life in its diversity and potential. Music carries with it inherent rules of form and rhythm and time, but within those rules lie infinite possibilities for expression. It’s all fair game. Get good enough and you can say to hell with the rules like Miles or Zappa. Or you can stay in your lane and perfect the striking of a single note as you remind the world just how you became king. Every song is what you make of it - how you decide to put the notes together. Screech and howl or whisper adagio, but every song has a beginning and an end. Then you move onto the next track and pray you’ll find the thrill again.

I’m going through shit in my life right now. Wrestling with beginnings and endings. Feeling adrift and lost, not knowing if this is life or if I’ve thrown myself off the boat. The song I’ve been living is fading out and it’s everything BB first showed me: heartache, grief, pain... but with an undeniable bittersweet tinge of hope and truth. And most of all, soul. Soul is what lifts up the pieces of a life thrown down. I can’t explain, nor do I want to, so I’m gonna lay back in the cut and let the band play for a while. 

BB King died and selfishly I’ll remember tonight as a coda for my own soullessness as of late. I’m flat and off rhythm. I’ve lost harmony and I’m lost in general. But the end of a song will do that to you. 

Every morning there’s a precious moment of suspended time between sleep and consciousness. When the mind knows it’s not dreaming but the body still lags between the two worlds. That moment is the Grey Dawn - when life exists between night and day, sleep and wake, black and white. The Grey Dawn is precious. The quiet time our minds are open to life in full - unencumbered by the day’s burdens. The Grey Dawn is without judgment, a suspended moment of perfection each morning where we allow ourselves to receive the universe rather than imposing our best laid plans and anxiety on it. We lie in limbo - ears tuned to the world that awaits while reconciling the dream worlds we’ve just left. The Grey Dawn is precious. It is the life force that affirms our existence each morning and should be treated with reverence - in stillness.