The other day I posted some pics of our new puppies Henry & Luna, but back in October we lost our old dog Bella. She had an impacted/infected womb and it was going to rupture, she was so old and weak we were all afraid surgery would kill her anyway, and made the choice to put her down because her womb rupturing was inevitable and would be a very painful death. Instead she went to sleep very peacefully with us holding her, petting her, telling her how much we loved her.
We made sure Bella had a very good final day where we spoiled her with lots of love and treats. The truth is though that was every day, she was my best friend and we did everything together. I miss her every day, but I was looking through some of the pictures I took on her final day and seeing that even on that day she was happy and there was love and contentment in her eyes is everything to me.
I figured I would share a few photos I took that day of us together and her final walk. I look like a mess because I was having a full-on nervous breakdown on one of the worst days of my life, but that's to be expected. I have a lot more but these ones are the ones I wanted to share today:
I'll never stop loving or missing Bella, but I know our other dogs and relatives on the other side are watching out for each other and waiting for us to come home, and in the meantime I hold on to every happy and painful memory, and the ones like in these photos, that have a touch of both.
It's insane to think that pretty soon it's going to be winter - the leaves all fell so quickly I pretty much missed it. I guess I should look up more. :/
Some insane stuff was happening in my personal life lately, so this blog has been neglected as a result. I didn't forget about it (even though nobody really reads it, or at least very few people do) and I'm not going to abandon it. I mean, I do abandon it for months at a time sometimes, but I always intend to come back.
I mostly just want to keep a log of what I'm working on and when, what my mindset is regarding my books and my writing, etc. It's useful to me when I'm looking back, and it's a nice momento to have for my writing life.
I'm back on Prozac (those aforementioned insane things happening in my personal life demanded I face my demons) so that's slowly been kicking into my system and I'm settling into a new sort of normal. Medicated normal. Which is good, because I need to be. Mental health issues are so easy to ignore and push-off dealing with until it's almost too late, but I got a couple large wake-up calls and I had to rely on my family and my doctor to make the right choice for me.
Prozac worked really well when I was on it back in high school, so I'm hoping revisiting it as an adult is an equal or greater success. I probably shouldn't have stopped taking it, but that's a learning experience, I guess.
Still, stuff will hopefully be better from here on out.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about zombies and dragons, and now I'm working on a project that has both. I have to get them both done before NaNoWriMo, because God Damn, I am going to sit down and hammer out my vampire serial for NaNo if it kills me. And if it does, maybe I'll even get to come back as a sexy fanged goth femboi fiend. :) I bet immortality would be fun. It would have to be that cool X-Men regenerating properties kind of immortality though, because what's the point of living forever if you're not also a super-cool badass?
The first episode of that vampire serial is written, but I don't think I've mentioned it here and I am not naming it until I have more work done on it. I have loose outlines for the first four to five stories. There's going to be six in the first season.
But it doesn't matter, 'cause I have too much to do before thinking about that. No vampires for the next ten days of October; these days are about white blizzards, snow-frosted dragons, and magical artifacts.
I am putting out a pretty new edition of Iceblood soon! Maybe early next month, which seems way too far away even though the dates I'm looking at are like, 12-12 days away, lol. It's not going to have any real changes in it, it's just a new cover to go along with the new sequels and their stunning covers. I love the new cover of Iceblood, though, it's finally just right and it really suits the story more than any of the previous covers. I think Iceblood and Blood of Midnight were the two hardest books to put covers to, for me, which is why they've been through so many.
If I'm being honest, Rage & Frenzy may need new covers soon as well, but I'm not thinking about that right now! Here's a little thumbnail version of the new Iceblood cover for your enjoyment, though:
Books 2 & 3 are going to be called Scoundrel and Catalyst! I hope you guys will really check them all out and enjoy them. And really, I hope enough people buy them that I can afford to get Cyberpunk2077 next month, but that's probably a pipe dream, ha.
More later. Time to write write write! If you guys are doing NaNo next month comment about your plans and motivations below! I'd love to hear about people's preptober activities!
All of my grandparents are gone now, which is a really weird feeling. I never really knew my grandfathers, in fact I only met one of them. But my grandmothers were such a huge part of my life, and it feels weird that I haven't talked about them much here, because it just feels painful and hard. But now I think I am at a place where I can talk about them from a place of happiness and wonder at the fact that I got to meet these beautiful people and share so many moments with them in life. Like a lot of kids, my parents were always busy working, they both had nine-to-five jobs that were physically demanding, and they were overworked and underpaid, so I got left with my grandparents a lot while my brother who was older was allowed to run around with his friends or go to after-school programs. I had no problem with this, because I was antisocial and I liked my grandmothers both better than I liked other kids my age and my friends at school. Even as an eleven year old boy, I had the personality of a woman in her late fifties. What can I say, some things never change. My grandpa Al died before I was born, when my father was about seven or eight, I think. After he died my Nanny Better had a nervous breakdown; she grew up an orphan in the Canadian foster care system and had bounced around from group home to orphanage to foster home, etc, from what I've been told, and she ended up sending both my uncles to live with our great aunt Lillian, while my father, who apparently had intense behavioral issues, was sent to live in a boys home for a few years. At some point, Betty got her life together, she bought an apartment building and turned the bottom floor into a commercial space, opening a convenience store with her girlfriend Josie, who we grew up knowing as aunt Josie, because I guess everybody thought we were too young to understand that Grandma was dating a woman, lol. That convenience store is still there, in fact I went there a lot growing up after they'd sold it. It's called Sam's now and it has been since the eighties or mid-nineties, at least. In the early two-thousands my Nanny Tony, who lived a few doors down, would send me there with spare change and I'd buy Miami Cakes and pizza pockets galore before going back to her place to watch unhealthy amounts of TeleToon. Anyway, Betty eventually ended up selling the store and becoming a librarian of all things. She loved books, but not as much as she loved cats and cigarettes. I have fond memories of listening to Stephen King audiobooks on tape at her and Josie's apartment in the West Side, in the dark, while trying to fall asleep, at like seven years old. I was traumatized. Baby's First Audiobook! Nanny and Josie lived together for years, even after they broke up. The last time I saw them together was in 2015; I blogged about it on this blog, actually, if you go back to summer 2015, it's when I got my first tattoo with my cousin Amelia. I remember that summer so fondly, we went swimming and saw a truck back into the water and get stuck, we went to Dixie Lee and got decent greasy chicken and iced green tea, we walked every night with Josie and her sisters. Nanny and Josie had moved to Josie's hometown at that point so she could be with her family, I think they moved around 2013 or so. Amelia visited them dozens of times, but I'd only ever gone that once. A short time after that trip Nanny Betty was moved back to our city, into a home, as her condition deteriorated and her dementia got worse. I'm ashamed to admit it, and it's a big regret for me, but I never went to see her while she was in the home for the last three years of her life; I was afraid, because I knew my father and I are probably both going to get dementia one day, it's like a family curse, and my father is already showing signs. I knew from Amelia and other relatives that she often didn't know who they were, that she often didn't know where or when she was. I couldn't see her like that, and the idea of it sent me into an anxiety attack every time, so my parents tried to shield me from the questioning and prodding of the rest of our family to the best of their ability. Everybody tells me I'm like my uncle John, Betty's son, Amelia's father, because we both love reading and books, and we're both writers, and the truth is I think I'm like him because we're both like her. It comes from her, the love of books and stories, and police procedural dramas. She babysat me for years in elementary and middle school and she was always watching some form of CSI or Criminal Minds. Nanny Betty always had a cat calendar on every surface, and cat plushies, and cat figurines, and more, and one of the keepsakes I have from her is a tiny cat statue on my bookshelf, it's white and blue and very elegant looking, even though I'm sure she bought it at a local dollar store sometime around like 2004. On the other side of the family, there's my mom's parents. I only met her father once, when I was very young. He wasn't close with anybody in the family, and when my parents got married years and years ago they sent him money for a plane ticket and a hotel but he never came. My mom talked to him on the phone occasionally, but I never had much interest in him. He died a few years ago and my mom found out he'd had more kids and she has a half-brother and half-sister out there, who she's had a little contact with here and there. Her mother, though, my Nanny Tony, was a HUGE part of my life. Nanny Betty and Josie always favored Amelia and my brother Brandon over me, which was very hurtful as a kid. I felt like I was the odd one out in the family who nobody wanted. But Nanny Tony clearly favored me, to the point where I truly believe I was her favorite person in the world. She died very suddenly when I was eleven, and my last words to her, a few weeks before that, were 'I love you' which brings me a lot of comfort even now that I'm an adult. I would go to Nanny Tony's almost every weekend, Friday to Sunday. Amelia's maternal grandmother Lillian lived right down the street, so if she went to her place we could both hang out and play as much as we wanted, which was amazing. Nanny Tony made the best scrambled eggs I've ever had in my life, and I always demanded she make them for me. I still try to make them like she did and I always fail. She loved Christmas movies and romantic comedies, and her house was a hub of activity, there was always several friends and family members coming and going, at all hours. If I slept in on the couch too long the living room got so crowded people would sit on my legs and wake me up. When my parents got into a bad argument my mom would storm out and take me and my brother to her place. We went there every holiday, and I remember one year on Easter she and my uncle Chicken, who passed away last year of a heart infection, put on the horror movie Boogeyman. Traumatized my dumb ass for life. Watching it now doesn't do anything for me though, it's so corny in retrospect. Nanny Tony also smoked like a chimney. Her and Nanny Betty would sometimes meet up at the bingo parlor and were bingo buddies for years before they had a falling out and turned icy with each other. (Drama, drama!) My mom took on Nanny Tony's personality trait of wanting to feed everybody all the time, although at this point I don't know if it's really a personality trait or a genetic disposition Greeks have towards hospitality and wanting to force-feed people. Both of them can cook a good damn meal. My mom is vegetarian and eats a mostly vegan diet now, but she still cooks meat dishes for my dad and I sometimes, like last night she cooked an amazing ham for us. I have very fond memories of running in and out of the kitchen while Mom and Nanny Tony cooked family dinner, and how various cousins and uncles and family friends and whoever they were all dating at the time would come over to eat with us. Everybody loved her. At her funeral they printed out cards with her portrait and the caption 'Queen of Duke Street' which seems pretty damn accurate to me. I used to sit with her on her front stoop all morning, watching people pass by, and more than half of them inevitably stopped to say hi and chat with her. I'm going to hop off now, since I think I've successfully conveyed how awesome these women were. They formed who I am and who I'll always be, and I'm eternally grateful I got to know them.
I don't know anything anymore, so I'm going to stop trying to figure things out and just float. I'm a mentally ill basket case so overthinking things is kind of my one and only skill, but I'll just have to work around that. Y'all probably have no idea what I'm taking about, which is cool, because neither do I half the time. But lately I've been really stressed out. I've relapsed with self-harm, I've been basically having an emotional breakdown a day. I don't think I'm alone in that regard because everybody has been stressing the fuck out for...a long time, honestly. Still, I'm at a point in my life where I never thought I'd be. I don't really recognize myself, know who I am or who I want to be, or where I'm going. So, I guess...I'm in my early twenties? I don't know. I didn't anticipate being this person. I can't say I hate myself, I understand certain reasons why I am the way I am, why it's so hard for me to connect with people or let anybody in, why I'm such an easier target for addiction and destructive behaviors, but understanding doesn't necessarily absolve me or make me feel any better, you know? At the end of the day, all of the questions we ask ourselves - Am I a good person? Do I have a soul? Is there a God? Am I wasting my life? - are all in our heads, and they'll stay that way, like they always have, until we die. So it doesn't really matter. But then again, knowing it doesn't matter also doesn't make me feel better. Or make me any less guilty for existing. I read in this Grimes interview recently where she said something like, she's sorry she can't do anything more useful to society than sing or produce, and I can relate to that. I've never really felt useful/necessary. I never didn't feel useful or necessary growing up, but I hadn't fallen into a void of depression, apathy, and emotional trauma at that point, either, so I don't know. This post isn't meant to sound as angsty and whiny as it does, but I find it really fucking crazy that there are people who wake up and go through their day and don't have to contend with the constant urge to end their own lives and/or do fucked up shit, that people get through a day without having an intrusive thought or purposely chasing down their own darkest memories even though they know it isn't a good idea. I don't know what it is to not be in the middle of a crisis, because everything is a crisis for me. The fact that I exist, in this universe, in a physical human form, is a crisis. I am not equipped to deal with this shit. I'm also not equipped to kill myself. I mean, yeah, I want to on a daily basis (awkward lmao) but I'm not about to rush out and do it. I don't know what stops me, if it's just fear of physical pain or a natural survival drive, but something does. I'm not going to act like I don't self-harm, because I feel like hiding it does more harm than good and, honestly, I'd rather be open about the fact that if you want to even try and recover, you're going to fucking relapse a few times. I relapse. At least I'm trying to do better for myself. Which is all any of us are in a position to do, honestly. All I'm saying is that a lot of people tell me I seem like I have things figured out, from an outside perspective. But I don't. I'm stoned every day, I have literally one friend, who I rarely see, and 99% of my time is spent in one room, in the dark, writing or beating myself up for not writing. I'm 21, I still live at home, I'm borderline and ocd as fuck, I'm not happy with my career, and I have zero close personal relationships. But I'm still here. I'm counting that as a win even though I don't particularly like myself or my life, because I'm alive and I'm fighting and I'm pretty sure I'm going to look my demons in the eye and kick their asses, any day now. I don't believe in happily ever after. I don't believe I'm going to wake up one day a month or a year or five years from now and magically be happy. But I do know that if I do wake up a year or five years from now, it's going to be the same way I do now - fighting. I know that I've been through some of my darkest moments and woken up the next morning even though ever fiber of my being was screaming that I wouldn't, or that I couldn't. I want to be a better person, I'm fighting to be a better person, and I'm serving paranormal romance escapism realness along the way. That's all I know how to do, so I'll make it work. The truth is I'm not writing this post for anybody else. I'm writing it for myself, to let myself know it's okay to keep moving.
I'm blogging two days in a row. Surprised? If not, you're probably new here... I planned to do some promotional blogs for Dreamseeker this week, since, in case you didn't know, I just put out a new edition complete with a beautiful new cover:
Are you not in love with that? Only when I sat down to write it, I remembered I hate self-promotion and decided to get out of my responsibilities by talking about how much I loathe them, instead. I have an anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder, and it's always made it hard for me to socialize. As a kid people thought I was really bossy and assertive, but as I got older that reckless, impulsive behavior become more dangerous and problematic, turning self-destructive, and it only got harder and harder for me to make friends among my peers or communicate with people in general. When I'm talking to people outside my closest friends and family, I'm usually playing a character. I wake up for the day and, if it's a normal day where I get to stay home and sit around in my underwear writing, doing photo-manipulation, and burning chicken nuggets, then I'm my regular nerdy self. I don't filter, and I manage to do that mostly by just keeping silent. But if I have to go out and be in public, I put on a character or a mask.* I know everyone does this to some extent, but with me it's gotten to the point where it's like I'm shrugging armor on and off for battle, and as much as I hate it I know it will probably always be that way. Letting people in and making personal connections is something I want, but at the same time it's probably the thing I spend the most time in life avoiding. (*I'm not like some kind of emotionally manipulative mastermind or master actor out here pulling multiple personalities out of a hat every day for the performance of my life or anything, so that sounds bad, but I switch between different personas based on who I'm with or where I'm at; my go-to is the sassy, flamboyant, funny gay friend, even though I'm way more low-key and introspective than that, because it serves the double purpose of matching what most people perceive me as (a funny, unserious, fairly confident cis male who can always make you laugh) and because if I'm busy being the funny gay sidekick who just cracks jokes, the laughter keeps people at arms-distance, emotionally, and things can't get serious and painful and I won't get invested or hurt, so everybody wins. Over the past few years another direction that's emerged is the friendly, approachable local indie author hipster, which is where I go when I'm talking to someone about books or when I'm talking to people who are a lot older than me. It's my best public face, essentially. Sometimes it's the place I speak from when I'm writing these blogs. But not this particular post, obviously, since I'm in my underwear at 2 am drinking coffee and listening to Last Dinosaurs, and can't be bothered. Yet another is more quiet, slightly bitchy, independent loner persona that I take on when I'm, say, on a night out with friends or in a situation where I need to feel stronger and more confident than I actually am. I think this one is closest to my actual identity/personality, but it's also probably the most anti-social, as well, so that's not great. Basically the gist of it is that I feel very inadequate in social situations, so it's easier for me to slip into a 'character' either to handle things differently or just to keep the people around me emotionally distant for me own well-being, and theirs, because I'm pretty sure I'm cursed. I don't know if this is a symptom of my bpd or just part of my personality, or both. I do know that most people switch moods/actions/thought patterns when they're in different situations and with different people, because it is human nature, but I also know it's worse for me because of my mental illness.)
Which means self-promotion is pretty much torture for me. If I'm able to accomplish something, it's immediately knocked down a peg in my mind, because I suck, so if I can do it, how cool is it, really? Before I was writing, books were these magical things, and authors were rock stars. When I finished my book and kept finishing others, I was like "Wait, is this it?" People tell me how impressive it is that I write books and I shrug and and don't care because I honestly don't think anything I do is impressive. Self-promo kind of only works if you can really sell your book and how awesome it is. I get through it sometimes mostly just because of the enthusiasm I have for my work - but even Shadows, the best book I have or may ever write, got fucked over on publicity because I was going through a poor mental health phase when I put it out. That's why I'm not publishing books until the whole series is done, anymore; I just can't cope with the feeling of stage fright when people are waiting for books or the reader's voice is in my ear. The point of all this downer shit is that putting myself or my work out there is a daily challenge for me, which is why often this blog is inactive; if I'm not in a black well of depression, I'm usually just not motivated to talk about myself or my work, because outside of the obvious factors of nerdiness and pop culture being awesome, I don't know if or why anybody would even care. So. Actually, that's a lie. The point of this is that I hate self-promo so much I'd rather publicly air-out all my personal demons and embarrassing secrets than do that. So this is me procrastinating in the form of over-sharing while also talking down about something I hate. Being an indie author is 99% stress, and for me most of it comes from the promo. Also formatting, but we're not going to talk about formatting right now, because if I bring it up for too long I start screaming, tearing at my hair, and climbing buildings to swat at planes like King Kong himself. I can't talk to bloggers because it's excruciating trying to push my own books, which are not famous or widely-read or even have that many reviews, either positive or negative, because I feel like I look like one of those people parked on the side of a dirt road in their minivan, selling 'fresh' seafood and oysters out of the trucks of their vehicles. Except, it's worse, because you can't even eat my books. Note To Self: Invest in chocolate books. I don't know what it is, since when I was a blogger myself I loved all free books and I also loved approaching publishers despite my anxiety, because I thought the arcs were worth the mortification of sending letters asking for them. I also know I have books on the Kindle app on my phone right now that are self-pubbed by unknown authors and have few if any reviews, and I'm still so excited to read them it hurts my brain. And that's what it boils down to: even when things AREN'T mortifying and they're really just everyday, normal, no-big-deal communications with other people, my brain freaks out for no reason and starts blaring sirens at me, and I'm smart enough to call its bullshit but not smart enough to figure out how to override the system, and the panic causes me to lash out and act recklessly, without thinking. It's probably why I cope with unhealthy amounts of weed and caffeine. Anyway the long and short of it is, Dreamseeker is out, I can't do it dirty by not promoting it enough, and since I can't let this series flop because I am literally poor and scared about things like not having enough money to pay my bills or eat, you will all have to watch me shoot myself in the foot trying to get word about this ebook out there. Sorry in advance. I'll probably be posting a self-interview centered around the book sometime tonight (if James Franco can interview himself, so can I, bite me) and more posts about it and the writing process this week/month! And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write a promotional short story :)
I feel like I spend too much time poking at my own wounds, making them worse, instead of doing things I know I need to in order to improve. I waste hours, days, months, beating myself up for shit as opposed to actually working to do better. I don't really have a point with this, I'm not going anywhere special with it, it's just that it's hard to work as a writer when you aren't earning much income at all and people aren't really finding or reading your work and you're drowning in an ocean of mental illness. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with problems, so I hate complaining and I usually just bottle all my shit up until it overflows and ruins my life, usually in the form of doing something really self-destructive or starting a fight with someone I care about. Actually, a lot of my personal relationships and friendships have deteriorated over the past two years. That's probably my fault for continuously isolating myself and distancing myself from people. The thing is, it feels like I should constantly be working, so there isn't time for a social life, and at the same time I feel convinced these people are better off not knowing me so I withhold my presence and emotional involvement with them and end up burning bridges. It's probably definitely not healthy, but it is what it is. Basically what it means is that I have very few friends left and I'm unhealthily obsessed with my work, namely the fact that I can't stop not doing it and procrastinating or going on like twenty hour work sessions where I lose track of time and nearly kill myself. Earlier this year I got into a car crash, and the day after I was attacked by a dog. My anxiety has been getting worse and worse, and it only increased when I started to fear physical danger and have intrusive thoughts more and more often after these experiences. I stopped leaving the house much, or at all, going for weeks and weeks at a time without going farther than my own back yard. I've spent days on end in bed, staring at a wall or drifting in and out of sleep. I'm basically a depressed collection of aches and pains, depressive tendencies, and pop culture trivia, blaming myself for every problem in the world while tweeting obsessively about American Horror Story. And I beat myself up for that too. It's crazy to me, because so many people in this community are open to talking about their mental illness and how it affects their work, and I really only talk about mine when I'm mocking myself and turning the situation into a joke. If I do let out a cry for help or let on how bad things are, I either delete it hours later or it just goes ignored, and instead of trying to fix the issues I stew in them, alone. I feel like it's not healthy that I haven't acknowledged how much I'm struggling, but the fact is there's a lot of pressure on me from every person and direction in my life, and I've already let so many people down that the thought of disappointing them even more by focusing on how much I'm struggling instead of trying to advance my career actually makes me wanna bury my head in the sand. Yeah. A large part of it is that I have no routine and no healthy habits. I exist primarily on a diet of frozen foods, pot, and black coffee (fairly sure I have stomach ulcers or something but am I cutting down on coffee? Nahhhhh) and I have a totally irregular sleep cycle. It's normal for me to spend five hours online, pass out and sleep for like twelve hours, then wake up and spend the entire day on the internet again. To put things in perspective, I've got six series on the go right now as well as countless standalone titles and things I haven't announced yet, I'm dealing with anxiety, depression, paranoia and self-destructive tendencies largely alone with no support system, I'm poor as hell and my career isn't where I feel it should be, and I compensate for the insane amount of responsibility I'm carrying on my shoulders...how? By bottling up all my emotions, blocking people out, and refusing to deal with anything or acknowledge the hand I've been dealt in life. Of course. Has anyone found out why this generation is so unhealthy yet? I'd really like to know what's in the water that we're all anxious depressive fuckheads like this, but as of yet I have like zero solid leads. Is it internet porn? Copious drug use? Doomsday fears? Radioactive tap water? Cell signals rotting our brains? I. Don't. Know. What I do know is that I need to work on blaming myself less. There's this line from episode 3 or 4 of the Shannara Chronicles that I've been thinking about for days now, where someone tells one of the main characters something alone the lines of, "All of this isn't happening because of you. It's happening to you. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be." So every day I've been trying to remind myself that all of this-all the pain and trauma and bullshit-is happening to me, and it isn't my fault. I didn't ask to be born. I don't know why I was or why any of us are here. I don't know what comes when we die or if there even is anything after we die. And that's not a personal failing. It's an abjectly horrifying fact that we all, in some way, have to deal with. And I have not been dealing. I've been sweeping my problems under the rug and hoping they go away. It isn't working. I don't know how many times I can do the same thing and expect different results. So this is me doing something entirely new and actually talking about the fact that I've got problems and issues and that most days I end up crying before six in the evening, and hoping that looking my demons in their glowing red and yellow eyes makes it a little easier to carry them on my shoulders all day. I'm gonna drink some water and try to do physical activities and interact with other human beings for once. I'm gonna not keep convincing myself that I'm literally the devil and some unseen force who governs all our fates is condemning my soul or whatever, like some cosmic elf on the shelf shaking its head and smacking its gum at me from beyond the veil. I'm going to stop purposely looking for marks against myself to write on my karmic scoreboard and just let myself float. At the end of the day we're all sad, confused, bitter little children running around on this rock crying out for whoever left us here. I'd like to think that I'm hardly responsible or even capable of being responsible for every bad thing that happens in the world, so I better start acting like it.
Lately I've been wondering why I get obsessed with random, strange things. When I say obsessed, I mean my brain will latch onto something odd and specific for weeks at a time, so it's all I can think about or focus on. It happens with events or people, tragedies or pieces of art or historical periods.
I know everybody has obsessions, and its normal to latch onto certain things or run into mental stumbling blocks, but I wonder about it a lot.
So, here's a list of things I've gone through obsessions with:
The Titanic:
I feel like a lot of people can relate, but I've spent hours and hours researching the Titanic, reading about it. I think one reason certain tragedies/events like this stand out in my mind because I have a really big fear of being trapped. The idea of being on the ship as it sank and knowing what was happening with no way off, I can't get out of my mind what that must have felt like or what those people must've been going through.
Grimes:
Yes, the singer. Not, like, her, as a person, but more her work and her creative process. I get really fascinated by the way certain artists work, and it doesn't matter if they're a producer or a painter or a writer - watching artists work and seeing them talk about their work, it's oddly something really fascinating for me. I've read like, 19 Grimes interviews. Interviews are a big thing for me for this reason.
Blythe Dolls:
This one was years ago. I don't know why I was so fascinated/fixated by them, but I was. They're kind of creepy, looking back on it.
9/11:
This one is similar to the Titanic. Knowing people were trapped in those buildings, and seeing images of them falling. The falling really, really gets me, because I have a fear of heights, too. It's a tragedy, and it's something that's hard to let go of, for some reason it's something I think of a lot.
Animorphs:
Another strange one, but there's something about fictional worlds. I'll spend hours reading through wikis, and this past few weeks it's been Animorphs summaries and wiki pages, but before it's been Game of Thrones or Vampire Academy. I get really fascinated by fictional worlds, particularly high-concept ones, for some reason. It's another thing my brain can't let go of.
Cleopatra Selene:
She was the only child of Cleopatra to reach adulthood. She saw her parents and siblings die, her home was torn from her. What did that feel like? How did she reflect on it later life, as a powerful leader herself? What was her story like, when history remembers so very, very little of it?
I don't know. Some of these things actively give me anxiety or bring on bouts of depression, but I can't let go of them. Others are just, random fascination, I guess? I don't know. It's just a small fraction of the stuff my brain gets stuck on.
Pretty sure my house is haunted. It definitely wasn't, when we moved in, and I've only really been experiencing this stuff in the last month or so, but I keep seeing things moving out of the corner of my eyes, hearing stranger noises, and feeling, well, not alone - when I'm the only one in the house. So. I'm fairly sure that one of us must have manifested something or unknowingly allowed it entrance, and honestly? I'm more annoyed than anything else. Nothing bad or malevolent has happened, and I'm really not too afraid of spirits. I'm more like Brenda, in Scary Movie, beating the shit out of whichever ghostie decides to crawl out of the TV, and I think that's fair, because it's pretty fucking rude to move into someone's place without permission, incorporeal or no. Since the undead bitch hasn't tried to shove my gay ass down the stairs or jump out at me from behind any corners (which would honestly just earn it an earful it would never forget) I'm honestly just gonna let it be. So that's where we're at; the house is clearly haunted, nobody believes me that said house is haunted, and, why should they? since I honestly don't care much myself. The thing is, I'm just looking at silver linings, since the last time we lived in a haunted house it was one of the historical buildings uptown and that presence was actively fucking with us and scaring us, and, at the time, that was really stressful, because we were younger. It never really got violent or anything, but it was harsh and it made it really uncomfortable to live there. This haunting is small beans compared to that haunting. I can't believe this has become my life.
It would be pointless not to admit that I'm not where I expected to be in my life, at this point. I'm about to turn twenty, so I should probably be excited and happy - especially since I'm starting to publish and follow my career goals - but I'm poor, ridden with mental illness, my living situation is less than ideal, my academic life is a mess, and my personal relationships are all in shambles. And there is no easy fix. It doesn't matter how hard I work, or how much I do, because - and this is something a lot of us refuse to believe - it is possible to do your best, to give something your all, and fail. And that's okay. It's okay to fail and learn a lesson from it. It's okay to do your best and make the choices you think are right and still end up in an unhappy place. I think sometimes when people see me mentioning these things, it can come off as complaining or giving up - and to be clear, I would never give up - but in reality I thinks it's just important to be honest about our struggles and the way we've either failed ourselves or been failed by the world, and, because of my situation, there are a lot of times where I can't talk about the ways I've been failed by the world, or it puts my current situation in jeopardy as well. I can talk about how I've failed myself, though. I can talk about how fucked around in school, or how I haven't been kind enough to myself, or how it's taken me so long to learn certain lessons. I can talk about the fact that I put my trust in the wrong people. I can talk about the fact that I failed, and continue to fail, to be able to predict the future. I can't. None of us can. What can we do? We can keep giving it our best, even when it doesn't seem to be working. We can have faith that just because we can't see to the end of the road doesn't mean it's not where we're meant to go. There are some things in life you honestly, honestly, can not calculate. If you asked my fifteen year old self about his five year plan, current me is sure as hell not living up to any of it. If you ask current me about my five year plan, I would tell you I've stopped trying to make long-distance plans. That's a side effect of being poor, but it's also a side effect of being disillusioned. I can't choose my future. I can plan and hope, but I can't guarantee the outcome. Honestly? I don't want to anymore. At the end of the day, life takes us where it takes us. And of course, our choices influence where we go - our mindsets and our investments and our decisions now shape ourselves and our futures - but they aren't the only things that shape ourselves or our futures. They're just part of the overall equation. And I'm going to stop beating myself up for not being able to control the world. I'm going to stop beating myself up for not being able to game a system that's always been stacked against me - one that's stacked against all of us. I'm going to accept that there are some things you can't calculate and I'm going to be kind to myself, because god knows the world isn't, too often.
This post is total filler, because I want to blog more, and I never have time to talk about the stuff I love anymore, so I'm doing that here. I keep telling myself to update this site more, because it's good marketing, and it's a nice connection to my readers, and it's nice to read posts from the past and remember things.
But I'm also a lazy, lazy nerd with not a lot of time on my hands. And in that limited time, I would rather do nerdy stuff than talk about doing nerdy stuff. But here's to talking:
I'm reading Six of Crows, and it's amazing, and I am blown away by Leigh Bardugo's worldbuilding. I'm binge-watching a bunch of stuff on Netflix; Devil is a Part-Timer, How To Get Away With Murder -- and I just finished Jessica Jones, which was amazing, spoilers or not. I can't wait for Luke Cage. (Is his show going to be self-titled too? I don't know. Who cares? More Luke!) And I'm also trying to fill out my sketchbook before the year ends. I really, really need to get some damn sketch work done. Pronto.
Aside from all this? Playing a bit of Tomb Raider here and there. Maintaining my caffeine addiction. Trying to deal with my crippling mental illness. The usual.
But no, really. I think I may need to go back on Prozac, which I really don't want to do, because side effects, and expensive medication, and gah. But my health is more important, and I'm better on my meds than off them, increased risk of type 2 diabetes or no. Because if something doesn't change I will implode, and it can't be my life that changes. I need this job, I need this school work, and I need to be writing - it's not the things I have to do, it's me, being too weak to handle the stress. And I know I have an illness and it's not my fault it undermines my quality of life, 'cause that's what illness does. It still sucks.
But I would rather be tired than tired, paranoid, anxious, and depressed. So. Them's the breaks.
What I would mainly like is a good night of sleep, clear skin, and a driver's license. Until then, however, I am stuck taking public transport to work. Which means I have to go get ready for my shift right now because the walk to the bus stop is forty-five minutes! Lucky me, right?
So yesterday was my first day of school. I have to admit, I've been anxious about this for weeks. The end of summer was getting closer and I had no idea if I would be back in school daily or on the same program I'd been on last year, which was one where I basically home-schooled myself. I had to meet with the principal yesterday to figure out what would be happening.
I think a lot of people are surprised to find out I'm still in high school, and that always surprises me. It shouldn't, honestly, because I'm too old to still be in high school, so the assumption makes sense - but I'm not used to people taking me seriously enough to not immediately assume I'm an adult imposter. So why am I in high school? I failed two grades, among other things. I don't know how I failed grade one, so don't ask - I don't even know how it was possible, but it happened. In grade six I started skipping school a bunch, and had to repeat the year. I kept skipping after that, but it didn't get me in academic trouble until high school.
Anyway, I'm supposed to graduate this year. And I'm hoping I'll have all of my credits by the end of the first semester, so I won't even have to do this for the entire year - just half. But in order to accomplish that I needed to get on packages - the aforementioned home-schooling program - so I could work at my own pace and earn as many credits as possible.
The day started at 4:30am. I woke up in the dark, sweating, with my heart racing. I'd had another one of those serial killer dreams. I seem to be fixated on this idea this week, and I keep dreaming about it. It's because I watch too much Scream the tv show and eating cold pizza before I go to sleep, but it's giving me thrilling dreams and fantastic ideas, so I'm not complaining. Except for the whole awake at 4am part.
I was nervous as soon as I woke up. If I didn't get packages then I'd be spending the entire year in stuffy public school classrooms, the ones with the pastel painted cement block walls and desks with plastic 'wood finish' veneer. I was also nervous because if I did have to do that, it would be my last time ever being in high school - and if I get packages then that last time has already past. And that makes me sort of sad.
Public school raised me as much as my parents did. The reading corner in Ms. Genge's first grade class, trips to the library down the hall in her third grade class later on. I can remember my first crush - which, surprisingly enough, was on a girl - in Ms. Hachey's fourth grade home room. I remember pumpkin carving in the gym of my first middle school in grade 6, both times around, remember getting sent to the office for snapping at teachers, remember the first time someone told me I was their friend and I really believed them. I can remember ignoring our teacher lecturing us in social studies in the sixth grade so we could talk about Twilight and New Moon, and I can remember how after the longest detention of my life the same teacher who'd given it to me told me she thought I had what it took to be successful.
I remember my home room teacher in the second attempt at sixth grade, Mrs. Holden, lending me books and talking about my interests with me after class while I helped stack chairs - not because she had to, but because she was genuinely interested in talking with her students. I remember a teacher in the seventh grade giving me ten dollars to buy a cd at a school event, and I remember the first teacher who ever snapped at another student for using a gay slur, because one of his classmates could be gay. One of the first people who ever really made me believe I was talented and clever was my ninth grade English teacher, and I can still remember the vice principal of my high school keeping bins of snack bars and pastries and instant ramen just inside the door of his office so kids could grab a snack. I can remember spending music class holed up in the book room across the hall or the empty auditorium upstairs, pretending to learn guitar while we spent the entire hour talking, becoming friends.
This school system has been my home for 13 years now, and it will be that and a half by the end of this semester. It's a lot to say goodbye to, no matter how it ended.
I ended up sandwiched in the principal's office with him and a girl I've been friends with since the second grade, and we both ended up getting packages. So that's it, I sat in a high school classroom for the last time the first semester of the eleventh grade, and now I'm never gonna sit in one again.
I'll never eat lunch in the cafeteria again - or, more realistically, trudge uptown through snow for off-campus takeout - and I'll never spend break between each class gossiping in the chaos of a crowded hallway, or skip a class to go for coffee or hide out in the basement hallway near the pool, where everything smells like chlorine.
I'm strangely sad about it. And I'm excited, too, because now I can focus on work and graduating and writing. It's just odd to leave such a big chunk of my life behind. It helped me become who I was and learn a lot about the world, and it's sort of melancholy to watch it all slip away, even if I'm elated at the thought of a new chapter starting. And a new chapter is starting. Because I'm free by the end of this year. I can move wherever I want. I can do whatever I want. I can pursue my career without having to sacrifice time to school or other commitments that are forced on me. I'm, y'know, an adult.
And hey, the rest of the day was pretty good, too: I spent a lot of it sitting in the grass at the public park smoking with friends, but I also spent some time at an old playground called Rainbow Park that I love, and I got to hang out with some people I haven't seen in months because of life getting in the way.
So yeah, I don't know. It was wild, and nostalgic, and I'm a bit torn up about the fact that it's the last first day of my high school years. I'm a bit sad that it's my last first day with the friends I've been with since elementary school.
I'm set to spent an entire semester sitting around in my pajamas, mainlining coffees, writing, and squeezing in episodes of America's Next Top Model in-between bouts of obsessive school work. So I have a lot to do, and I'm gonna go get started, but I just needed to observe this strange sequence called time for a minute.
I feel like I should be happier than I am. I feel like I should probably be better at shoving out these empty spaces that keep trying to fill me up. And it's like I win, you know? I win the battle, and it convinces me I've won the war, so I stop being afraid to smile. And then as soon as things are good again, it all floods back in.
I don't really know where the person I actually am ends and the person my depression turned me into begins. In a lot of ways I think they're the same person. But I also think I had the capacity, once, to be happy, and naive, and innocent. I can remember being that way. I can not remember exactly when the chemicals in my brain starting turning against me and eating away at that person, but they did, they have, and they've been doing it for so long it's become my new normal.
And I worry, too - I worry that someday I won't beat it. Someday I won't be strong enough to swim against the black tide, but I will be strong enough to pick up a bottle of pills, or take that last step off a very high ledge. I wonder and I worry.
It feels like sometimes instead of being defined by what I actually am, I'm defined by what I'm not: like all these null and void spaces inside me I haven't filled up yet are spilling over, pooling on top of everything else like oozing blood until all I am is a long list of anti-accomplishments. Like I'm nothing.
It's funny how I win, too. Because sometimes it's as simple as drinking three cups of coffee and blasting some Katy Perry, circa 2011. And other times it's an entire November spent staring at the same blank ceiling and feeling nothing. Feeling like everything has spilled out a hole in the bottom of me and I'll never experience another emotion again. and when I do, it's fear.
But even when it's like that I always end up floating ashore one day or another.
I still worry though. It doesn't matter how many times you've been tossed overboard, how many times you've been unable to tell up from down or see sunlight through the surface - when the black tide swallows you up you panaic, even if these are the waters you were baptised in.
And the other ones? The anxiety? The paranoia? Those are a bit more problematic...
Depression is hot right now. It's sexy. It's hipster teens in black Adidos jackets, clutching cigarettes and torn sheets of loose leaf and turning blazed eyes into the cameras because they're gonna love this on Tumblr, it's gonna get five-thousand notes and every indie and pale blog in a hundred miles will have your face plastered on it! But it's the ugly mental illness indie blogs have never tried to make popular.
Because when I'm in the corner of my room at 3:43 in the morning with my shaking hands clutching a baseball bat to my chest like the last life raft in a stormy sea, that's not hot. Because there's not really someone trying to break into the house from outside, but hey, there could be. I don't fucking know: I'm crazy, in case you didn't get the memo.
When I run home from the bus stop so I'm panting and dry-heaving by the time I get to my lawn all because I think they're watching me from inside the trees, that's not hot. It's not hipster.
I can't help but think that if the lines I was broken along were smoother, more pleasing to the eye, that maybe I could cut myself some fucking slack.
But when it's 1am and I'm still shaking from that embarrassing thing I said today - why the fuck did I say that? - and cowering in the dark because my mind is convincing me that someone is after me, waiting in the woods and watching for the chance to catch me, it's harder to think kind things about myself.
But I still beat it, you know? I push away the pretty pills that pound my heart into oblivion because I want to be strong enough to swim on my own, without their help, without them keeping me up. But I remember how easy it was when I had them floating under my back, and sometimes I wonder...
I think there's a lot I could say about the ways people are broken in more malicious ways than I am, about the way they fall in love with their fault lines and try to paint them as pictures of love instead of working for recover. There's a lot I could say about how hard I am on myself.
But I still have it pretty good, and I feel like I should be happier than I am. So for now I'll just make some coffee and dig up some old pop music, and maybe I'll win another battle in this endless war with myself.
I'm in a lot of pain right now. Did I break a leg? Cut myself? Sprain something? Nope: I went to a friend's house and got a lot of flea bites. They're swollen, because I'm allergic to flea bites, and itchy, because they're flea bites, and it sucks. Fuck fleas. Honestly, they can go to hell.
Flea bites aside, though, I've been having a (mostly) good time, as of late. But life is still weird, in the way it's always been weird, and between bursts of goodness and fun, life has been a cloudy mess of nostalgia and dread lately. Basically, it's almost fall.
To start with the good, I've had a great past couple of weeks. I promised to post more about my vacation and then never did, so to start I guess I should get into that: around a year and a half ago, my grandmother and aunt (who is not actually my aunt, but who I've always called my aunt anyway) moved out of the city to my aunt's home town, which is called Campbellton, and is a four hour drive away. I haven't seen them since. My brother, parents, and cousin had all been up to visit, and I hadn't. Since my grandma's health isn't great I've been really anxious to see her again since they left, and this past month I finally got the chance to go up with my cousin Amelia for a five day trip. The four hour drive ended up being eight hours, both ways (thanks, bus company routes!) and the trip was...wild. Good wild.
I never thought I'd get my first tattoo on a trip to Grandma's house, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Bad ass, right? Top that with a wolf and some store-bought basket food, Red Riding Hood!
Anyway, the trip was good. Amelia and I have been best friends since we were born (I was born exactly seven days before her) and we spent most of our early years together. Who we are is irrevocably tied with each other and, honestly, we're pretty damn similair: we're both creative, chaotic, passionate night-owls with a tenancy to bite off more than we can chew and get ourself into trouble like a fish gets wet.
My memories are scattered and hazy like the smoke from my grandmother's endless stream of refrigerated cigarettes: Amelia laughing out the open window of the car as we swerved around a corner, the hiss of my grandmother's ancient, bald cat as he batted at my face for daring to pet him, the fast-track, clipped accent of my aunt's seemingly infinite line up of sisters. My aunt, Josie, and her sisters, took me on a walk every night. Amelia tagged along sometimes, but other times it would be just me and Josie and one or two of her sisters, strolling along. we would point out houses we liked, tell old stories about each other, or ourselves, they pointed our local landmarks and recounted wisdom they'd picked up along their path through the years. I was consistently amazed by some of the little nuggets of humanity and wisdom I found among the cast of my vacation, which was mostly middle aged to senior women. But it was a young vacation, too. It was Milly flirting with the hot guy at the Sobey's checkout counter, it was me walking through the dark town alone in the rain, dreading coming home. It was diving back into the current at Tidehead beach and feeling new memories wash over my head like the cool water, swallowing me up to spit me out again as something new, something both older and younger.
And for the weird? Coming home was a struggle. I knew/know, in my heart of hearts, that this could be the last time I ever see/saw my Grandmother. I might have the opportunity to go up again in October with my brother, and if I do, I'll take it. If she lives through the winter, I'm going again next summer, too. Nan has been in bad health for years, and she's survived a lot longer than any of us thought she would, but I know that no matter how long she lives, I'll always regret not spending more time with her when the end inevitably comes. I've already lost one grandmother. So has Amelia. We both knew what we might be leaving behind when we climbed out of Josie's car and into the cold morning to get back on our bus. We knew, when Josie climbed onto the bus after us, tears streaking her face, to hug us again and press twenty dollar bills into our hands, what had pushed her to come after us for one final goodbye.
We both know what it's like to lose someone to time, to realize that your last goodbye was the last goodbye. I still remember Amelia's hands shaking as we hovered over our Grandmother's bedside in the dark of morning, wrapping her in hugs and whispering our goodbyes to her half-seeping form before heading out for the long trip home.
Something was coming to an end. A chapter we'd been reading so long we'd fallen in love with it. And this trip? This trip was the final scene of our beloved chapter. I know that I'm going to remember this summer, and this vacation, for the rest of my life, in some capacity.
It hasn't been all bad since I got back, either. My tattoo is now healed, and while I did miss the Saint John Pride parade, I've been out a few times. The other day I met up with my best friend, Kuma, and a friend of ours named Kevin, so we could go into the city for the day. The plan was to hit the library and hang out sketching, but instead, after checking my bank account for eight bucks and realizing I had one hundred and fifty, it turned into a wild day of walking, shopping, laughter, and sunlight that sears into the memory of the day so that you can almost feel it on your skin when you look back on it.
I bought a bunch of books, and a bunch of incense, and tea, and snacks, and lunch, and...okay, maybe I got myself a new pipe. My old one was broken, the mouthpiece is twisted. Her name is Lady Starship. The new pipe? Not twisted. Not rusted or burnt or damaged in any way. She's perfect, gleaming black metal, and her name is Black Cobra. I also got these new cigarettes (if you can call them that) that are menthol free and nicotine free.
Cute, right? I'm not a big smoker - I mean, sure, I smoke pot sometimes - and I've been known to indulge in a cherry cigar every other month, but cigarettes? Not my thing. Lung disease. Yellow fingers. Nasty. these, though? We found them in the organic food store while we were getting incense and tea and thought they're be fun to try. We chain-smoked them in Kuma's room while getting shitfaced drunk on home made wine and breaking in my new pipe. I'm not entirely sold. Kuma really liked them, since she doesn't smoke weed or actual cigarettes they make a nice, healthy alternative - but I'm not too fond. The smoke was really, really irritating, to the point where I was full on crying because ouch, my eyes! and I couldn't really taste the vanilla. And, you know, because I'm just that kind of high-class bitch, my organic cigarettes need that vanilla flavour if they want to keep me around.
We also took selfies in the Asian Market:
My point is, it was a good day. And there have been other good days. My cousin from Vancouver laughing at the table with me and my mom over a bowl of freshly picked blueberries, smoke twining in the air of my bedroom while I sit talking with my dad, an endless stream of good writing days and netflix gossip Girl marathons and so many coffees I'm sure my blood is half-caffeine now.
And yet I feel sort of...sad. Melancholy. And I'm worried. Scared, even.
I'm scared that the summer is coming to an end in a very short three days. I'm scared that I'm turning twenty years old in a few months. I'm scared that I might have to go back to daily classes soon if my homeschool-ish program doesn't work out this year, I'm scared I might never see my grandmother again. I'm scared that I'm turning into an adult. Time is passing so quickly now.
Yesterday I'd just been accepted into my first-choice high school. I was a naive, slightly-damaged but still mostly-innocent teenager who had four years to get his shit together. Today I'm a nineteen year-old who's going into my final semester (if things work out I'll graduate halfway through the academic year, as opposed to at the end of it) I'm tattooed and toughened-up. I've got new scars and new sorrows, and I'm stronger for them all. I'm a wholly different person, and I've barely had time to blink.
So who will I be in three years? Will I be the struggling writer living with his parents and working a shitty job at a Starbucks to try and get by? Will I be the published author and artist living in a tiny Toronto apartment with my best friend? Will I be single? What colour will my hair be? Where will I find room for some more scars? Who are my pets, my friends, my thoughts?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm an adult now - or just about to become one - and it's fucking scary. Responsibility, work, regrets. I just don't want to look back in twenty years and wonder where all my time went, why I wasted all my chances. But I'm also excited.
I'm excited because I'm a self-published author with big plans to increase my readership. I'm excited because I'm finally turning into someone who isn't afraid to stand up for himself and be his own best friend. I'm excited because all these new opportunities are turning up and all I have to do is be brave enough to go after what I want.
In short what I'm saying is, nostalgia is messed up. And so is the future. And I'm sort of a mess, but it's beautiful. I have people on my team who are invaluable, like Amelia/Milly, and Kuma, and my parents, and my readers, and it's all kind of funny how things work out. If you'd asked me who I would be someday four or five years ago, I would not have told you I'd be the boy with a scar on each wrist (one still pink and healing, the etched in my flesh with ink) who had a fire in his chest and sparks in his eyes, who was a published author, who was not ashamed to look his own reflection in the eyes and say "I love you." but now I can't imagine myself as anyone else.
So that's where I'm at right now, between screeching at the MTV Scream finale and mainlining cheap instant coffee, I've been asking myself who I am and who I'm going to be. They're some tough questions. But I've learned lately that I'm tough, too, so maybe I don't have too much to worry about. I don't know what this semester, or this year, is going to be like - but I know that, through all of it, I've got me, and I've got this blog, and I think...well, I think I'm ready.
And that might be the scariest thing of all.
***
Bonus, the song that will officially remind me of this summer forever:
