So someone posted a short rant earlier that kind of pissed me off, but rather than going on their post and starting a fight, I'd like to make my own rant about it. I also wound up blocking that person, because they've been posting things I disagree with far more than anything, and I disagree inherently with the ideology behind the post they made.

They essentially said that routine and discipline in the craft are not at all important, and neither is getting results. They said that anyone who believes any of it IS important had a "toxic grindset/workout mentality", which is rather ridiculous to be honest. Basically they were comparing occultists who are dedicated as the gymrats of the occult world.

First, routine is important. I'm not great at building routines myself, but if you have a routine set up for monthly and weekly spells it will help you keep on top of things. And to address some of the comments on that post that I know I'll get, I am also neurodivergent. I am undiagnosed, suspected adhd. Routines are extremely difficult for me to start, especially if they are spaced out. Once I am IN a routine though, it's so much easier to keep up with

Discipline is not "toxic" btw. I saw a lot of people talking about needing to have a life outside of the occult, and no one with a brain is gonna tell you that you don't need/get to have one. Discipline is not "I will eat/sleep/breathe this thing until it has comsumed my every waking moment" it is "Practicing this thing at least for an hour a day, or a few times a week will help me get better at it."

Practicing divination daily will help you improve your predictions, just like practicing the guitar every day will help you improve your finger technique. Discipline is required in any craft if you want to become proficient, whether you want to become a "master" or not. It's ok to dabble, but I'm not gonna go to someone who dabbles in painting for a portrait I actually want to show off.

And then the bit about not needing to push yourself to get better results. Like ... I don't understand why anyone would type that. At all. If you don't want results, why are you doing magic? Do you really not care about results, or are you just not getting them? And instead of actively trying to figure out where you're going wrong and improving your craft, you're just gonna talk down anyone who puts in the work to do better? Are you seriously negging people who enjoy practicing magic because you can't be bothered to? That whole post just made that person seem so sad, and then I saw all these other people in the comments agreeing

I'd like to make it clear, this is not putting down spoonies or chronically ill people. Of course, work within your own abilities. Someone with severe asthma shouldn't be trying to mountain climb without a good amount of training. But you CAN START TRAINING. You can work on your craft little bits at a time. You can do low energy magic and rework spells that include things you're allergic to. You can do research, or listen to podcasts in your downtime. Dedication to the craft might look different for different people. It doesn't mean you have to hyperfixate on it and let it consume your life. But you can't expect progress if you AREN'T PROGRESSING

As a person with PTSD, I don’t like when people gatekeep the use of the word “trigger”. (You can disagree with me on this, btw) but I really don’t like it when people tell other people, “Don’t use the word ‘trigger’! You don’t have PTSD! You’re exaggerating! You’re appropriating!” etc.

My reasons boil down to two:

1) Huge numbers of people have undiagnosed PTSD. They might actually be triggered by that thing. In any case, they are describing their emotional experience to you. If you think that people need to take PTSD symptoms seriously, then you should support taking seriously the emotions of people without PTSD, too. Listen to them and take their feelings seriously, whether they have a diagnosis or not.

2) I shouldn’t have to out myself and my mental illness and tell the world that I have PTSD in order to draw boundaries. Sometimes you need to express to a person, “Could you please tag ____? It triggers me.” If only people with PTSD are allowed to say “trigger”, then every time I have that conversation with somebody, I am labeling myself with a gigantic “I AM OFFICIALLY TRAUMATIZED” sticker on my forehead. That’s not cool. Nobody should have to divulge their medical history in order to ask people to be gentle with their feelings. People know what “triggered” means. They know to take it seriously, and in many cases, they know what to do about it (avoid posting the thing the person tells you is triggering them or tag for it, etc). It’s really handy vocabulary, both for people with PTSD and for people who are dealing with other stuff like anxiety, depression, or just squicks.

I know that the people who are trying to gatekeep the use of the term “triggered” are trying to help people with PTSD and trying to remind the public of how seriously we should take PTSD symptoms, and I thank them for that. But gatekeeping this term is not necessarily helping us, or anybody else, in the long run.

i don’t like to talk about these things “in the real world” for many reasons but mostly because anytime i speak about anything regarding these topics i usually end up feeling more alone and wish i hadn’t been open. id like to think im handling everything pretty well, but then suddenly comes the collapse where my heart begins to cave in and i feel unable to do anything. i can’t process what anyone is saying around me, i can’t respond, i can’t get my body to move, i can’t think, and the only thing my body does do is cry and panic. it’s like there is a bubble around me and everything is muffled and no one can get through. i am having a hard time dealing with losing my best friend, and my mother and grandmothers illnesses, and the death of my grandfather and everything that happened with my father, and other things that i don’t feel like mentioning. i am having a hard time speaking up and feeling like i matter. i think i am dealing with at least two undiagnosed mental illnesses and i am scared of both being diagnosed or completely dismissed (i am used to being dismissed, but i am also terrified of it becoming official.. im not really sure why). i wish i still had a close friend that i feel comfortable confiding in and being vulnerable around and i really wish therapy would stop being shoved down my throat (btw no shade towards therapists, my mum has been one my entire life and ive watched her have a positive impact on so many peoples lives) *REDACTED NEGATIVE THERAPY RANT*. i think daily kindness and a genuine friend and having the space to feel connected to myself and the earth and other people would be more helpful and beneficial for me than a $300 therapist rn but hey what do i know. today i called out of work and last night i slept 13 hours. i dreamt of my old apothecary job that i dream of weekly, if not almost nightly. every time i walk in the apothecary i look for my old coworker/ friend who is so special to me. when we are together we create so much magic and ive never had anyone in my life like her. i can feel the desert calling me.

I'm wasting my teenage years

I see me and compare to what other people do or have... and honestly it makes me sad. Even in my shit hole of school this group of sophomores have a band, a lot are in the religious groups, a lot have friends that live near them so they crash at their house every day to have fun, everybody goes to parties every weekend, they all go around... have interesting and fun lives... while I stay at home and scroll through my phone every day... I don't really have hobbies... I hate the people who live near me... I never get invited to any parties... In the past 5 years I have only met 5 new people out of which 3 I just talked to like once... my life's been the same since I'm eight... I have been the same sad little girl since I'm ten... All my friends, whom I don't really actually like, have been the same since I'm ten... and I'm fucking seventeen... I should have plenty of friends, have something to do with my fucking evenings, I should be rebelling against my parents and going to parties, smoking pot and making out in dirty bathrooms at concerts, having a sweet caring boyfriend or getting my heart broken, having a band, having friends that actually like me, just... doing something. But instead, I'm chained to the being a "good girl", to the shyness, to the embarrassment, to the mental illness, to my horrible friends, to my shit hole school and people on it.

And you know why I'm wasting it? Top three:

Undiagnosed mental illness

Shitty school/people on it

Overprotective mom and dad

Extra: Shitty friends

Sometimes I just wonder how different this could have been if my parents had agreed to change me from school when I was entering high school... and wherever I look it could have been the best thing that ever happened to me:

I could have had the chance to meeting new and more people and making actual friends because then:

I would have been able to forget all my mistakes and learning from them by starting over by creating a new and improved version o myself that would have led to better self esteem and better friendships

I would have actually been able to choose who I wanted as a friend because I would have had 100 people to choose from per grade unlike the 100 per all highschool I have now and therefore there would have been more variety of people not just the:

I'm rich and get drunk everyday now shut up I'm a vain bitch who has horrible musical taste™

I'm an art hoe who likes american pop culture and yeah im so alternative i like billie eilish btw that we are nice to you doesn't mean we like you™

I'm a prude who doesn't likes doing anything but having good grades and yes i think im way better at everything than you and ewwww sex whaaaat?? Oh Im not homophobic I just find them disgusting™

foooootbaaaaalll mainstream videogameeeeesss country and music that kills 100000 braincells per second oh and tons of pot and alcohol because we want to be labeled as bad boys yeeeeeaaaahhhhh soooo manly yeeeeaaa hey look at her boobs™

yes i like music just like you but you're ugly get out of my sight™

we're the weirdos but you're kinda too weird to be an actual weirdo so fuck you™

d a n k memes, anime and fortnite™

we're literal bitches and also we'll never forget the obsession you had with one of our friends and will make sure to make fun of you everyday till you die™.

I would have had to actually make them want to be friends with me and not them settling with me thanks to pity just because I've been their dumb ass friend since elementary.

By choosing who i wanted as a friend, I could have been able to start a band, a mf band!

I would have had more freedom and therefore would go to parties and concerts and meet even more people with similar interests, and have a raised sense of self and self steem + my life wouldn't be boring

By meeting people, I wouldn't have developed my hate for socializing and would have learnt to be less introverted.

I would have had a chance to be in actual art clubs/classes to develop myself better in that area, ending up not sucking at it.

I would have developed myself way better thanks to not having to deal with the heavy anxiety about what I did in middle school

I would have had the chance to enroll in the alternative culture earlier and feeling myself

I would have had more motivation

I wouldn't have developed further my apathetic attitude and therefore be more likeable

Etc

Etc

Etc

Everywhere I look it's just perk+perk+perk+that looks like flaw but it's actually a perk+perk+perk.... while here... where I'm stuck it's just flaw+flaw+flaw+oh look i found a perk on the floor i wonder who left it there+flaw+flaw+flaw..... it's unending...... everything about my life is absolutely disgusting and it makes me want to vomit. even the parts of my life that are supposed to be small heavens like the music/art club or my house are actually just another layer of hell. I just want to end this shit..... I wish my mother could see how actually shitty and miserable my life is to change me from school which is the root of it all.... and she has seen it.... she has read my diary she has seen everything and she still doesn't gives a shit and laughs at my face when I ask about the possibility of change. What I have been repeating myself since I entered this shitty high school is how many time of this fucked up experience is left.... Now it's just one year till i go to college.......... Just one year until this nightmare ends but guess what?? I will be an adult by then and guess what???? MY TEENAGE YEARS WILL ALREADY BE LOST

If this next year, my last fucking year, my senior year, something dramatically changes for good I would be soooo fucking grateful eventhough it doesn't makes up for all the hell I had during highschool, but something it's something.

I JUST WISH THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT SO I WASN'T LIVING ON MY OWN PRIVATE HELL THAT EVERYONE ENJOYS BUT ME

Today I got a bipolar diagnosis

edit: btw, nobody was injured when i crashed. it was into a light post and nobody was around.

There is confetti everywhere around my room. And I am confused why there is such a mess and why it’s so pretty to me and also why despite seeing beauty in the mess I feel uncomfortable with my space having little shit all over it and I want it to be clean. Today shit hit the fan and the shit was a balloon and when it hit the fan it erupted and confetti flew everywhere. I got a bipolar diagnosis today. After nearly 10 years of clinical diagnoses from major depression, generalized anxiety, ocd tendency, mania, psychosis, to a literal thought disorder called delusional disorder, as well as PTSD, today I heard something that felt like it contains all of me and there is room for me to be me and not feel so confused and like my identity is all over the place depending which disorder is showing it’s face most. I am Cassidy Jean Gardner, and I am bipolar with PTSD. I feel terrified and so confused and Im crying while I write this but the tears feel like a relief a sweet rush of acceptance from and for myself that I have been yearning for for a long, long time. My therapist believes I have mixed manic-depressive bipolar called cyclothymic bipolar, not to be confused with a less “emotionally intense” cyclothymia diagnosis. With my understanding so far, I understand that Bipolar 1 is characterized by more manic tendencies with depressive stints. Bipolar 2 is characterized by more depressive tendencies with hypomanic bursts. The difference between these types of bipolar and the one have been experiencing the spectrum of for the last 2 and a half years years for sure is that BP 1&2 symptoms of mania or depression last several days, weeks, or months. Cyclothymic bipolar experiences of mania and depression can last hours. I have been so confused by my own mind for so long, and like my emotional responses to things were never valid, true, natural, and in my manic times, not even human. I can go from being manic to then coming across something that doesn’t fit my manic ideology and having an extremely depressed, hopeless response, to, sometimes it feels like minutes later, come up with a new “solution” that helps me feel better and relieved of the shame i feel about my manic beliefs and world view that I go right back up there again, and the cycle repeats. Thinking myself in and out of mania it can feel like. The days when I am not crippled or at best, so far, consistently hindered, by the accompanying anxiety of not having much of a sense of emotional normalcy or “neutral” perspective on things are my best days. The days when I am hypomanic, and I decide to scrap everything I’ve been working toward and stop identifying with these things in the name of authenticity libration and creativity, are my favorite right now, and that is hard. because it’s not super helpful to be this way- so passionate and “righteous”- that i throw out the window regard for any sort of routine i have worked hard to establish myself in the name of having “figured out something better”. It’a hard to feel so happy I can’t listen to my rational self because I feel so intoxicated by the feeling of happiness motivation and productivity I so crave. I am not sure what is harder. Being so manic that I become psychotic, completely delusional to the point that I literally believe I am Satan or Lucifer herself and that everything around me is confirming this horrible burden yet somehow “karmic blessing” that I never asked for, the the times when my depression is so bad I sleep for 16 hours of the day, have no motivation to even fathom life becoming better ever, and prefer to dream than live waking, walking life. I have lived in ambivalence for years, and as a coping mechanism I convinced myself I thrived in this arena. I see myself in front of the pendulum that is my mind. Every day it swings and I try to control it. It doesn’t stop swinging. It swings so roughly and rapidly that it flys out of the bars holding it up often. It’s like there is a wind pushing it that is the devil itself tricking me by being “invisible” aka not existing. When it’s on the manic side, I try to grab it and in the process get picked up off the ground and everything around the pendulum gets knocked over in my efforts to hold the pendulum and keep it on the “happy” side. Like the things around me are my life that I’ve built and they will fall as easily as bowling pins. There is no weight to keep them stable when I hit them. The foundation is slippery. On the depressive side, I rush over angry that I wasn’t strong enough to hold things on the manic side and desperately try to push it back toward my “happy” side, but it is so so fucking heavy. and I don’t remember it being that heavy and I cannot believe I ever fathomed loving the pendulum I was clinging to sometimes minutes earlier. Shame guilt self loathing. compared to my visions of grandiosity, of the world revolving around me, of having a sense of self worth and confidence and the courage to claim it and say hey i deserve to feel good about myself. to god how dare I ever think that. I am the most selfish person on the planet the sheer vain and foolishness to believe everything even anything really could possible be about or for me. I like to believe that I am somewhere in the middle. I prefer the hypomanic side, and this is a detriment as well, because i can easily get too high. but the hypomanic can be so... fun. The bits of excessive energy, the slightly inflated sense of self worth, the belief that I can follow my dreams and the ability to use my mind to direct my thoughts toward ways to create strategy to get where I want and build stepping stones. The fear of fallibility. the anxiety that comes with ever feeling good about myself from the ptsd of that abusive relationship and that night especially. I shouldn’t plan, because they will be foiled, if not by me by a man most likely. nowhere is safe, especially not my own mind.  thats’s where I perceived love, and oh hasn’t god shown me how powerful that is. being so manic that I confuse the feeling with someone being my soulmate, twin flame, my destiny. telling that person and responding to the rejection emotionally by going psychotic and fully delusional. How afraid I have been to love, of my own love, being truly loved that i don’t feel the need to constantly prove myself, and certainly the idea of ever loving myself for being who I am. In 2016 when I got PTSD and no longer was the “high functioning” “mentally ill” girl I was before, many people treated me like I had fallen from grace and it was my fault. Thank fucking god for the people who have been here for me. So many people took this as an opportunity it felt to slander me. “ha, I knew she wasn’t so wonderful, look how crazy she is. She intentionally crashed her car. who does that?” a person who is so confused with their undiagnosed bipolar and the fact they are going through a manic episode as a response to intense trauma therapy does that. I was told my whole life I was wonderful for being pretty and intelligent, and what a special combination. what a bitch of a “gift”. The two things I was naturally both with and did not earn, my intelligence and my body and my face. What about my humor? What about my ability to be a good friend? What about how hard I work? I was told I should never dare praise myself for these things because I was already “lucky enough” to be praised for the things I never asked for but was given by either genetics or fate- god knows. I have so many feelings. and I’m so grateful to know that I am impulsive. Sure, I’m “spiritually gifted”, but not necessarily everything has to be a blaring call from god or synchronicity that I must act on immediately if I want to see the “right things”, see the world the “right way”, and “be where I am to be”. My perfectionism has nearly killed me. Seeking to be spiritually perfect because I sure has hell was not physically or mentally perfect, I mean, look at those guys and girls more “beautiful”, look at those men and women more “accomplished”.  And the brainwashed peers (not their fault) for idolizing me, giving me a sense of power I never fucking sought. Sure. Maybe you can make the argument that my “soul wanted this”, but suffering was never in the deal. and I have suffered. I have been so miserable I didn’t even know how to fathom the energy to put together a plan to kill myself. and thank god for that level of depression, because I didn’t die. because I’m supposed to be here and finally I feel I can make some peace with my singular identity as Me, Cassie. someone who is fun, funny, smart, relatable, bipolar, and so much more. I feel terrified of stigmatization even though I know it’s fucked up that it even exists. At least, I think, with the delusional disorder diagnosis, even though it was similar to a schizophrenic diagnosis just lacking frequency of symptoms, hardly anybody knew what it was. Oh I have a thought disorder and the propensity to think in delusional ways sometimes. NBD tho as u can see I’m perfectly fine :). So many more people know about bipolar. And many have strong opinions. The plus here is that there is more push to end stigmatization and more research into ways to cope manage and accept this diagnosis which I am so thankful for, and more easily accessible community. There was nothing on delusional disorder. It was so uncommon that when my psychiatrist in the rehab told my therapist what my diagnosis was she handed me the DSM to read about it because she didn’t know what it was. Yeah, I went to rehab. Last november (2017) I had a psychotic break, though it was not my first experience with delusion. I became manic as a response to feeling rejected by a guy and it escalated to me hardly sleeping, doing a lot of cocaine and other drugs, and having a full blown psychotic break. I experienced psychosis for 2 and a half months. The first 3 weeks of this stint it was all i could feel or think about. At first it was fun, until it wasn’t. I legitimately thought that there was a secret society the illuminati that had been made to “illuminate” me, that all art had been inspired by me, the energetic muse, lucifer “finally reincarnating” back to earth in the age of aquarius and dawn of immortality, and nobody around me was safe because I was all that was valued by this illuminati and the people who I loved most were in danger because while I loved them most and the illuminati knew this, the illuminati was angry that these people has hurt me, someone who was so impressionable, “born schizophrenic and able to hide it in order to learn about ‘normal society’”, and were responsible for the pain I felt which I  handled with negative coping mechanisms like addiction. So it was my job to create worldly and spiritual circumstances to keep them safe from disaster and accident or murder because they all felt so bad about hurting me subconsciously that they had less of a will to live, and this was a dangerous way to think, subconsciously of course. That I was everyone’s higher self in the 4d’s favorite 3d person other than their person, and that they all were working to send me messages from the consciously unaware around me. I was fully out too my mind. I legitimately thought I was lucifer, the most hated person on the planet but god’s favorite angel, ready to ask for entry back into heaven. And the only thing that was me was my fear response to my thoughts and the way I read into everything. no I can’t dare think this this can’t dare be true but somehow everything around me is telling me it is. Literally fuck this. I felt that I needed to be with loved ones constantly to “keep them safe” and I understandably was simultaneously scaring the shit out of my family due to my mental health, and exhausting them. my mom and I both agreed the best thing was for me to go into a treatment center, the rose house. A “dual-diagnosis” rehab that treated mental health and addiction. Cool, well when I got there apparently every single reason I had mental health problems was because I had used substances, not because I had struggled with my mental health since becoming conscious in light of my father passing when i was almost 9 and eventually found drugs as a coping mechanism. I felt shamed for my addiction to marijuana and 100% misunderstood and ostracized. out of the 15 women there all of the girls my age were in primarily for addiction and the only woman who was there for first mental health was an older woman named Kathleen, and she wasn’t an addict. The delusions never stopped I got better at hiding them. I was heavily medicated, afraid, fearing homelessness if i didn’t follow my family wishes to finish the 90 day program, and still pretty insane. After I got my diagnosis I left the treatment the night I got onto “transition” 67 days in and got my phone back, called a friend, and got brought up to fort collins where thank god emma was willing to let me stay with her. Miraculously, the delusions stopped within days. I was no longer so stressed and afraid that I couldn’t think for myself. I was bipolar this entire time. and my mania was “so irrational and unrecognizable” that they didn’t even know to recognize that this was my issue, it was more like I was “almost schizophrenic” without the visual hallucinations or auditory hallucinations. I wasn’t hearing other voices, but the voice in my head wanted me dead just as much as it told me I had a special reason to stay alive. I had a “sane reaction to insane circumstances”, and I temporally lost my mind. and I was petrified and anxiety ridden to the point I couldn’t function for months. I couldn’t make a single decision for weeks without going into full blown panic. I felt like everyone knew something that I didn’t and that they couldn’t tell me what I thought I knew, just give me hints, because otherwise they could be punished and also because they “believed in me”. I felt horribly betrayed while simultaneously fearing abandonment and isolation so much I felt I had developed Stockholm syndrome.  

When I experienced full blown psychosis that was so scary, my whole life went to shit. I lost my scholarships. I lost my house in boulder so my family could afford rehab. everything changed while I was in panic and when I “returned” to a “normal” state of mind I couldn’t recognize anything in my own life, even myself. When I was on medication I gained 70 pounds in 2 and a half months. I went into rehab 95 pounds. I was so manic for months, either full blown or hypo, that I would forget to eat. And I was 165 when I left. I hated my life and the months following I was more depressed than I can ever remembered. I relapsed in april. april to september was a mix of drugs and romance that I don’t really care for. When I got sober again, prompted by a really scary night of returning to psychotic thinking which I thankfully learned reality checking skills for, I feel like after 4 almost 5 years of using drugs I was finally ready to stop feeling so out of control, at least with my substance use. Thank god for today, no matter how afraid i am of my future. I am just as hopeful. I have for hate myself for the ways I have treated people in my manic episodes, my family in my depressive episodes, and how I can hardly even remember it. but I do not deserve to feel this hate. I was suffering. I was living in a world I hadn’t found the words to describe. and now I know. That I am beautiful. truly. inside and out. and I have a beautiful mind. I love fiercely. I believe I can make a contribution to help “save the world”. That those who are mentally ill should be hugged tightly when they need it, that schizophrenic people especially, imo, are horribly and unfairly understood and deserve to feel cherished and accepted just as much as anyone else, not to be feared and casted out of society. I believe every single person no matter what deserves to know they are not alone, no matter how lonely they feel, and so much more good. I am not the ugly or the bad. I am a motherfucking survivor. And thank god I didn’t die the day I re-enacted my dad’s car accident. Because I do have a purpose, and it is special. Most importantly, it’s just as special as everyone else’s special purpose. We are all in this together. And I’m excited to find a community of people who have fought similar battles. Who I can laugh about my “a trillion under the sun” delusions with and find humor in the ways my mind sought to preserve a will to live. and how other people have done the same. I am me, and today I became free of my own condemnation. I will struggle, but now I know there is community and resources that I don’t need to scour the earth to find. I have a home, and it is here, proud to be me. There is confetti everywhere around my room. Who knew that balloon I had been so afraid of letting go of was my own attempt to celebrate myself. I may feel late to my own party, but I’m here now. And there is no problem with not wanting my room to always look like a wild rave. I can always make more confetti, anyways :) 

To end with some gratitude, thank god for my true friends and my family. Emma has never left my side as my best friend, even in the distance of living in different parts of the state.  She is my best fucking friend. My other close best friends as well, who have not been afraid to hug me when I swore to them my entire body was covered in needles. My mom, who has done everything for me to make sure I know I am never truly alone, no matter how much my mind tries to tell me otherwise. For my little brother, for putting up with my craziness and still being willing to love me and laugh with me at the end of the day. Everyone in my life now is so beautiful it’s hard to deny that there may be some beauty in me, too, then, if they all tell me they like when I’m around. I’m grateful to know that my father, who i have idolized though gone now, was whole loved by the people around me. Whose described as “large than life” personality and substance abuse may have been a way to mask bipolar symptoms, was still a loved personality and loved person. This I know. This people have convinced me. and that I am of him just as much as I am of my mother. I’m grateful for the mental health professionals who have not given up on me, even when they required i be medicated in order to be able to be worked with, even when i was misdiagnosed, these people have helped to save my life too. so many times. And I am so grateful for my higher power, for prayer, the only thing that felt safe to think that sometimes I would just repeat the serenity prayer for hours for the sake of at least having a way to direct my anxious energy and not be in panic from my own delusional thoughts. God, who has always shown me that i will never be truly abandoned or given up on, who has helped me understand my higher power as something that is absolutely not punitive. My family and friends have been my lifeboats, and god, the universe, gaia, the god in every person, has shown me how to survive the storm. I am. I desire. I see. and i am free. 

This has been such a clusterfuck of emotions coming out that I have been wanting to feel for a long time and as messy as this is i’m grateful as well for the will to sit through this and write about these experiences, no matter the feelings they bring up. Because know I feel free to understand that the feelings will pass, sometimes more quickly than others, and that I can always survive. Even when that’s all I “manage” to do. Today. I stayed sober. I laughed. I put up the christmas tree with my mom and brother. I talked on the phone with my best friend. I told close friends what I learned about myself today. and I got diagnosed with bipolar. and I found a hope and interpretation for my mental narrative that I never felt was right for me because i don’t understand the words for what i was experiencing. I have learned today. And I have grown. and I am smiling as i finish typing this with tears rolling down my face, because I believe I can be happy. Sustainably happy. and sustainably grateful and hopeful when it’s hard to get to feeling the happiness. I believe and I survive. and I become<3 I am 21. I am brilliant. and I am bipolar. 

It’s been awhile, weird old blog with unspecified direction. How about more of me me me?

I finally did DMT again, and WOW. It’s been at least a full decade since the last time. I still didn’t quite “break through” enough to “meet the entities” again but mein GOTT was it healing. Speaking of God, we’ll get to that soon... But before smoking the dimitri, I was beginning to sustain a mania in slow motion with dissociatives again. Not to any extreme like I did with PCP long ago (btw, glancing at my Eyehategod poster, I realize that horror/metal fest when I was blasted on PCP the entire time was all the way back in 2013! It seems to much more recent, but the way these drugs interact with memory is very peculiar. or maybe it was the traumatizing effect of it and other things at the time that makes me block out and thus distort the time signature of the memory... I digress). And I don’t have the destructive tendencies I did in the past anyway, so I’ve never been apt to push it as far as I was when I was shooting up 3-meo-pcp and blacking out for days at a time. I mean, I did push it I suppose. For the main George Floyd protests I was loading up on a combination of things. Can’t even remember if that was my sober window between methadone detox and the suboxone I’m on now. But, I was combining bits of weird PCP offshoots with opiate offshoots (4-map iirc) and/or kratom with maybe a drop of benzo... straddling the line between going overboard and a “party dose” for lack of a better descriptor; between recreation and desperation. In retrospect, I was summoning the courage to act like my old self used to in these sorts of situations. That is, giving it my all, being novel about it, idk, summoning the spirit of Dr Gonzo I suppose (who, after reading his two books, was more slimey of a jerk than he’s presented in Hunter’s stories. well, I need to finish the Cockroach People book, he started getting into his attraction to underage girls as a young 20-something man himself and ugh, gross). My true wild & adventurous spirit has been hampered, weighed down with anxiety and depression and all manner of undiagnosed mental illness. Who knows if it’s more the drugs or the environmental factors that trigger drug use, but the spirit is tortured like Griffith in the torture dungeon, the heart is wrapped in a black grime guarded by the Beast of Darkness, the will is subordinated to authoritarian capitalist hegemony...

Where was I? Oh so I started suboxone for the second time in my life innnn... February I want to say. Last time I did it I was able to detox myself simply buying subs off the street, but I did it too quick. That’s been one problem, every time I detox rapidly it’s too harsh a push back into reality and I succumb to relapse less then a year into sobriety. The reason reality is harsh is the same reason my stance on anti depressants has been further cemented. I’ve articulated it better lately... Basically I believe it’s a weird solution to depression to force your chemical makeup into the right position to function properly in the same environment that caused it in the first place. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” One of my conversations with a young college friend really illuminated why many don’t even consider this position. She was insistent there’s no cause of depression, you’re just born with a fucked up mind. Now sure, hereditary disposition is a thing, as a drug addicted child of an addict I should know. But for example she pointed to another friend with hard depression and was like “his life seems fine what explanation could there be?” But I put forth maybe his childhood of having to closet his homosexuality in a hard conservative family that had the possibility of disowning him if they knew about it contributed to that “natural chemical imbalance,” as it’s implied. YES, some people NEED it. But for the most part, it really seems to me to be what I’m gonna call the thyroid phenomenon. That is to say, a medical explanation for a small fraction of severely affected patients is used as a broad brush by the public to diagnose themselves. Forewarning: I am not fat shaming here, forgive the example. Dietary practices are a personal thing so my feelings are stronger as well. Anyway, it seems to me as soon as this thyroid malfunction became a hard biological explanation for obesity beyond the psychological, suddenly everyone was a candidate. It’s fine to think “maybe I have it” but when a growing and significant portion of the obese crowd started screaming they all had thyroid problems and can’t help themselves, when a teensy percentage actually do... well it sort of touches on the “addiction as a disease” narrative that’s never sat well with me. Addicts use the disease reasoning to skirt personal responsibility. I'm not denying it is a disease, but I believe calling it as such in the public discourse isn’t terribly constructive. (Okay, you’re seeing an opinion change in real time here... I changed my mind.) I was vehemently against the narrative, but I need to readjust to simply make people WARY of the narrative. As an addict, I could easily see myself using the excuse of it being a disease as a fatalist function; that is to say giving in, relinquishing personal control over my fate. Hereditary disposition, Rat Park, addiction as a disease... there’s also a severe lack of control it all conjures. Paradoxically, drugs can used to meticulously control your state of mind. I can’t control my desire to control myself?

God where was I going with this... Oh! God! May as well mention I’ve been warming up more and more to the spirit of monotheism beyond it’s structural and institutional dimensions. I could get deep into my recent past of not believing in the idea of a spirit, soul, etc. How the pendulum of my ideology swings between cold rationalism and loose spirituality, especially as I go through phases of rebellion against perceived oppressors. Growing up in a red state with a lot of Christian ideals, society around me was always telling me everything I seemed to like was the work of Satan. Naturally, I started reading into Satanism. I never self identified with occult-esque belief structures, except maybe chaos magick because it’s whole idea is to merge whatever practices work into something of your own, but I did staunchly identify as anti christian. Not a hard thing to do when you’re already a metal head, which definitely fueled the trajectory. Not to mention metal helped goad me into DXM use (thanks Velvet Cacoon ya bunch of goons), the first real psychedelic journeys I had. Because I never gave real consideration to myself having depression, I moulded my personal ideology around the symptoms it causes. Which is why for awhile after coming to terms with depression as a problem I probably have, I was only able to identify it in retrospect. I never felt it in real time because it was so old-coat to me, I adapted to it like an addict adapts to their drug of choice and ti becomes their world. So I would decide to skip social events, let my room get messy, watch only old comfort shows, etc... but only AFTER emerging from that state was I able to immediately look back and think “wait... I was doing all those things because I was depressed.” In the moment, it’s rationalized as “I don’t want to see these people for these reasons” or “I want to watch spongebob because it’s fun and an old favorite.” Rationalization, the concept of the west, serves as a detriment to the individual in a number of manners. This is one. I was a MASTER at rationalizing away my drug use. Statistically, more people die from this this and that, why be worried that I’m on this drug instead? Statistics quelled the perceived danger. It was also a formative tool in my skills of justification. I always felt I had to justify every action I took, but that’s getting back into family matters...

But why not bring that up? it’s a sore spot. I feel like the tables have flipped from my dad always saying “you all just think I’m an asshole!” to me thinking I’m the asshole. It’s too much to get into but I’ll touch on a couple important things... I’ve learned a major source of my anxiety is not being able to draw the boundaries between business and family and myself, because they’re not properly defined. When I’m told by my bossfather after explaining the distress I feel simply thinking about the family company, and he goes typically all-or-nothing when I touch on crucial issue and says “if you want out just tell me you want out”, I can’t separate between whether he’s saying it as a father or as a boss in the moment. He would say, “of course I just mean the company”, but where does company end and family begin? It’s also an intense pressure, maybe shame, simply typing this and thinking in the back of my head about someone who might read and think “what a spoiled brat, has a family company and blah blah.” But who put all that in my head? He says he’s changed from the days of putting immense pressure on me with the sort of sentiments that cause that shit in my head like always telling me how great I have it and all the opportunities, shit, I’m feeling it right now, the frustration and I can’t even identify these emotions. At least I am aware of them, that’s a huge milestone for me. But the only thing that’s changed is he sees me as a the broken mother fucker I am and treats me as such. Sometimes it’s nice, and sincere sympathy, other times his frustration with having to check his language all the time is palpable so it does no good to do so. The immense pressure, the intense urgency, the confusing complexity, all those market pressures haven’t changed. This is evident when we were driving somewhere and I suggested not worrying about the fastest route on the map because one minute isn’t a big deal and he insisted that one minute IS a big deal. Sweating one fucking minute indicates a mountain of reputational pressure. In a way, that one minute is putting business ahead of family, but I feel harsh saying it because as he’s pounded into my head the business is what allows the family to survive. Not to mention why put the crack head of the family above that one minute (not literal crack, but it was obvious as soon as he saw I was “fucking around” on ketamine he decided to not take me as seriously) Still, I’ve made my decision that survival reasoning is fucking bullshit already. He’s the one that wants a mansion and wants enough mailbox money for us not to have to worry ever again, so he’s the one deliberately creating the pressure. Maybe he hasn’t considered how hardened he’s become to those feelings after a lifetime in the street and in prison. I really feel for mom. She’s okay now, but her spirit... It’s part of the reason I can’t relax myself at home. He has always painted her as dead weight in the past, never getting a job, sitting watching TV, but he’s unable to connect the dots psychologically because we’re all layman that part of the reason she’s like that is because her actions have been demonized already so who the fuck she got to prove herself to? Same reason I fell into relapse sometimes. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t sort of deal. The damned if I don’t being the reputation of yourself you have to live with after getting sober. He says “don’t worry about it” but I couldn’t accept that because the reason he doesn’t trust me (never mind respect, that’s even further away) is informed by my past. I can’t complain that he never allowed me to contribute to a crucial decision like choosing the building for the dispensary, talking about whether we want a certain investor or not, etc, is because that’s not something to entrust to a druggie. I’ve always felt he let me play make-believe CEO and gave me an allowance for it, while telling me otherwise. He’d say “this is all for you” but he’s making the decisions that truly move mountains and then putting it on us. Which is why I have a hard time saying “I want out”, he can be a baby about things just as much as I am, and I fear he’d let his entrepreneurial drive be affected by my departure. Sigh, this is already getting to be a headache to think about... He’s tired. I’m tired.

There was also something I wanted to say regarding the role social constructs play in all this, but it’s getting long enough already. Suffice to say I’ve been getting into psychoanalysis lately and it’s scratching the right itch for knowledge and wisdom. I can see why Zizek is enamored with Lacan, and why it’s so important to mix it with Marxism. And not to toot my own horn, but what the hell... There are a lot of lofty ideas I’ve been coming across that are already parallel to ideas I’ve developed through my own life experience, and it makes me think I’m meant for this sort of stuff. If I’m lucky in my pursuits (not to put too much weight on the luck aspect), I’ll be a journalist of some sort. Articles, video essays, whatever. Need to rein in my indecisiveness and dispel FOMO tho.

Back to DMT. But not really. Earlier in the summer I got some straight Ketamine and it was also immensely healing. But it has a great abuse potential, especially for me, so it’s harder to “hang up the phone” after I get the message as TmK would say. It made me feel again, and start to understand what love is. Partly because it conjured all these lost feels I had for Kat. She’s great people though, I think I’d just stress her out too much. Idk. Whatever. My love life is a total mess. Anyway after I ran out I wanted more of course and stumbled on some DCK, a somewhat rare ketamine offshoot. Coupled with my increasing propensity to trip acid more than once a week, they started building on each other. I was happier and happier at home, but at work/fam was getting more and more distressed about my place in that whole show. In his show. Simply thinking about the company, especially after having read that article about procrastination and how much it resonated with me, caused me unnecessary levels of distress. Normally as quickly as I can feel that, my mind will tuck it away and bottle it up somewhere so I can go about my day. The problem with drugs is they cause you to act instead. So he was doing the usual “it’s so easy! you’ll have it made!” and I interrupted with this torrent of shit I’ve been holding back forever, and he would not yield on his “you didn’t let me finish...” Incidentally, has he really never picked up on every time I interrupt I already know what he’s talking about? I said as much, something like “it’s not the labor” and he keeps saying “no you’re not listening” as though a frivolous detail changed the main thrust of the fact he’s always trying to make it easier for me. I wish he could simply let me go off and have the strength to take it a little less seriously, but considering how often I take things personally I shouldn’t be surprised he does to. On top of this, his brother/my uncle was in the hospital for some serious shit. But another reason I picked this time is because I only feel safe even confronting him when non-involved parties are around. He doesn’t care that I don’t feel safe confronting him though, he says “don’t worry about me” so maybe I shouldn’t. I feel like such an asshole about it, but that feeling is conjured by the ideological structure he helped to create. Where does my shame end with him being the causation and start with my personal ideology? How much can a person create their own ideology, truly? It’s about as small a window as free will, I imagine.

SO after feeling awful for going off after having all this stuff build up in my mind, I felt awful and went home to drug up some more. Again, not recklessly to the extent I used to be. But I did a fat line of DCK while on a couple hits of LSD and a smidgen of Zolpidem (a wholly underrated substance). Everything was getting to me all at once. A perfect storm of my problems. All the while another doubt caused by ideology from without (society and family both) was making me think it’s all the drugs. But the developments I’ve made are huge strides, I’ve matured so much from it all. And I realized every time I do this, those developments are wiped clean because the validity of them is rendered null due to both the general social stigma of drugs and my history with them. And maybe that’s a major trigger fo rmy relapse in the past. I’m not suppose to be on drugs, but I dabble, have incredible experiences and make strides of maturity, but because it’s drugs the exact opposite effect is percieved from the outside; the experiences are simple chemical euphoria, the strides of maturity are false delusions. It triggers a sharp roll back down hill. I wish someone respected me for who I am, I feel so alone sometimes.

Drugs as an umbrella term, drugs as a vice for the worst dregs of society. There are so many problems in our world regarding drugs. I could write a book. But how much I’ve written here touches on another pressure I feel. IS it simply him again? When he asks “you’re gonna be gone in a few days right?” is that what’s making me feel like this is a waste of time? I’ve got to get out of here. It’s so hard though. I simply have to be strong. The strength is in me to take the massive cut to pay and benefits when I move. Maybe I’ll get a portion of my strugglers card back and shit heads like Blasey Shomas can’t simply say “why don’t you take care of yourself instead of daddy taking are of you?” anymore. Part of me wants to say he says that because he’s driven by his own emotions and not smart enough to directly debate my claims, his insults should hold no weight. Another part of me is truly trying to be... I don’t know a proper term for it without sounding egotistical, but “enlightened”? This is why monotheism is sounding more interesting to me. Jesus’ position about those dregs of society. I’ve always tried to be a trusting person, understanding of people’s struggles, the ideologies they function under that make them lash out or otherwise act the way they do, etc. I even changed my wording there from “I’ve always been” to “I’ve always tried to be.” Not so much for my usual reasons of dodging a committing claim (which I’m working on -- instead of “I think ___” just say what I believe to give the claim more sense of authority so as to be taken more seriously), but trying to be more humble. And not to think lowly and use myself as a punching bag like I used to... ugh, whatever. This post is messy enough.

So that night after having done DCK every day for a couple weeks and tripping every other night on acid, I was at my wits end on what to do, where to go next, everything. The outside world is crumbling, the inside world is lost. I finally whipped out that DMT I’ve had for a long while, something inside told me it was time. Oh duh it was the wits end part, I had no other chemical recourse. I sat in my bed with a foil sculpture loosely resembling a pipe, repeated to myself “it’s okay, just let it happen to you, it will be okay.” A part of me even had a small fear based on those rare reports of those interdimensional beings mentally raping some people, but I don’t know what to make of those experiences, seem like flukes. I took my three deep hits and set the pipe aside as soon as the rusb began and laid back. It wasn’t enough to break through, so I need to get a proper pipe, but it was enough for a “being” (which I am convinced is a part of your mind, not from another dimension or otherwise external source) to appear before me. At least I think. Whatever it was slowly came closer, reassuring me that I’d be okay. The most profound part was an overwhelming sense of all these puzzle pieces suddenly falling perfectly into place where they should be. As though the answers to all my struggles obvious and within me the whole time. For example as soon as I came back I adjusted my posture, as that’s something that I’ve been wanting to work on, and because I was reminded of that just now I adjusted my posture in my seat while writing this. I felt an overwhelming sense of forgiveness toward myself, I think. Amazingly, the inebriation I felt before the trip was largely dissolved, as though the stuff I was on somehow all lost it’s potency. The distresses melted away. At least, the power behind them was nulled. I’m still facing the same problems, but there’s a zen(?) quality to my thinking when they come up in my mind. No longer will a pin drop trigger everything I’m feeling all at once. When I came-to completely, I started BAWLING. In being overwhelmingly consoled by the trip, I became inconsolable. Tears of joy. Tears of healing. And that was the main takeaway. The loudest words of the experience were “Now the healing can truly begin.” At the same time, now the real work also begins. 

Balance is key

Oh yikes...I'm remembering how my parents used to treat me when I was growing up and while we have worked through a lot of the "oh wait this was actually a problem" stuff I don't have any closure on literally abandoning me emotionally at age 10 and using their careers as a distraction from me because I was "a difficult ungrateful cold stupid bitch" (aka undiagnosed female with autism and btw this is a direct quote from my mother not my views in autistic women...obviously) Even now they act like work and travel is more important than having an adult relationship with me and it hurts. Not to mention still totally victim blaming me for all three of the times I was raped because I was trying to run away, blackout drunk, or I chose to hitch hike cause I literally had no other choice. Now she has the audacity to be posting things about feminism and sjw stuff when they adamantly told me I'm mentally ill because I'm agender and never once using my correct pronouns. But nope because I did heroin for a year and a half I have no say in the ways they treat me and I owe them a relationship and my kindnesses and my energy because they let me live with them for 8 months while I was getting clean and in recovery.

So with all that said my mom did tell me that she's ashamed because she thinks she wasn't the right mom for me...and like that really hurts cause it absolved her of the need to grow and change as well as indirectly saying "I am guilty cause I didn't raise you right"...like no. I love myself and I'm so grateful for my past and my truth. You just never supported me past childhood. I remember her talking about kids she was teaching as if they were the next Einstein because of her but I literally failed every class I was in from 8th grade on....

And my dad isn't off the hook either like he always made sure I took breaks and he brought me tea and stuff but he saw how she treated me and didn't say shit and made up conspiracies and delusions about me because Ive smoked pot since I was 12.

I don't want a pity party I just want my truth to be heard and idk how else to say it besides online because no one will validate my truth.

Wow, huh, I guess I’m actually getting kin memories for David! Memory dump after the cut, and it’s really lengthy.

That summer actually was my very first summer as a camp counselor, and the end of it was very difficult for me. I didn’t even realize it was coming to an end, until the second to last day. Gwen had probably realized I was clueless, because she had helped the campers getting ready to leave without telling me. I think… Everyone in the camp could tell I didn’t realize how fast time had gone.

I realized during breakfast time of the second to last day. While the quartermaster was serving up everyone’s breakfast, I read the schedule out loud for everyone, as always, and I saw, in Gwen’s handwriting, something along the lines of “departure preparations”. I read these words, several times, as if I didn’t understand them. And by the time everyone had caught on, I had broken into tears.

All the campers gathered around me in a group hug and I just couldn’t stop crying. It was one of those silent, hiccuping kind of crying, I was just staring into the distance and holding whichever kid was closest to my reach at the moment as tight as I could. Then I heard someone cough, the way someone would cough to catch someone else’s attention, and I looked in that direction, and saw it was Max. And I realized he hadn’t hugged me like the rest of the campers had? I wasn’t even particularly upset about that, because at that point I had understood that displays of affection were NOT Max’s thing. And yet, he coughed, and when he did everyone kind of stepped away from me, and he walked up to me, I was on my knees on the ground of the dining hall at that point. He stopped and we were eye to eye, and he was just scowling, and my silent sobs had stopped at that point? Then he just. He just opened his arms and wrapped them around me and burrowed his face in my chest and I just lost it. I was a sobbing mess and I held him so tight, and after a few seconds it was back to the group-hugging.

When I calmed down and came back to my senses the kids were making fun of me now. Well, not really, it was just playful teasing? Telling me things like “Really David? Did you not think about the end of the camp? Did it not hit you that we would all have to leave eventually? Did you not realize the temperature out dropping?” (I actually remember someone pointing out “Space Kid’s helmet gets all foggy in the evening now, how could you NOT realize summer is almost over?”)

They kind of had to push me around through the day so I could be active. I particularly recall Nikki taking my hand and leading me around because she couldn’t figure out how to close her suitcase, and it was because she had rolled all her clothes into a ball, and she didn’t actually know how to fold her clothes? So I taught her how to do it properly, and we managed to get all her stuff in and close the luggage without any trouble.

That day ended with a bonfire, and nobody actually went back to their tent that night. We all slept under the stars. I had a very light sleep and kept waking up, so I took care of keeping the fire alive, and putting more blankets on the campers who looked cold. Neil ended up with a mountain of blankets over him. Just, over a dozen blankets superposed.

The campers left early the morning after, and it took me all my willpower to not cry again as I watched them climb in the bus with the quartermaster and wave Gwen and I goodbye. My heart was at the bottom of my stomach, and the hand that wasn't used to wave back at them was held by Gwen – and she just squeezed it very tight every time I would shudder or show any signs of being about to cry. The goodbyes…. Lasted very long. Some of the kids were crying too, and I had to force myself to smile at them and reassure them. Tell them that we’d probably meet again! And they should definitely ask their parents to send them to camp again next summer. Camp Campbell probably wouldn’t exist anymore by then, but… I wasn’t going to tell them about that, right?

When the bus drove off, I just watched them. And when they were out of sight, I was still staring at the spot where I last saw them. I didn’t even notice I was crying again? But I was. And, Gwen too, apparently. Because what made me snap out of him was noticing her rubbing at her face from the corner of my eyes, and when I looked at her, her eyes were red and puffy.

I just patted her shoulder and we went off to clean up the camp. We stayed silent at first, but whenever one of us would find anything that reminded us of something that had happened during the summer, they’d call the other to show it and then we’d start talking about what happened and laughing about it.

A lot happened during the course of a summer, huh.

Halfway through the day, my phone went off with a text sound. I never had it on me during camp, but since the kids were away, and Mr Campbell couldn’t be there to scold me about it, who cared right?

I opened the text and found a message that said “So how are you holding up, David?”. Before I could answer, there was a second message, with a picture this time. A picture of Max, Neil, and Nikki, smiling and making faces at the camera, and I choked a sob. A third message said “This is Max btw”. When I asked him how he got my number, he explained that he had written it down when he had stolen it. Then, when I asked whose number it was, how he got a phone for himself, he explained that he used the bit of pocket money he still had for himself to buy a prepaid phone. Well, Nikki and Neil cashed in to help him get the phone, and he got himself some credit.

From that point on we regularly talked by texts. He wasn’t keen on phone calls, which I didn’t understand at first. I started paying for his credit, too, so he wouldn’t ruin himself with these expenses. He kept me up to date on his everyday life, but never mentioned his parents. Ever.

One day, several months after the end of the summer, I got a letter in the mail, but there was no sender’s address or information on the enveloppe. The handwriting for my name and address looked familiar, tho. I opened it, and was shocked when I realized it was from Daniel. It was an apology letter. He explained that, at the time where he had applied to be co-counselor, he was suffering from sever, unmedicated an undiagnosed psychosis, and after being sent to the hospital for his poisoning, he got sent to a mental institue to start an intensive therapy. He said he was medicated now, and that he was much more stable, though sometimes he did relapse in the form of extreme depressive episodes where he got self destructive instead of trying to take it out on other people. At the end of his letter, he gave me the address off his mental institute, in case I wanted to write him back. He also explicitly said that he wasn’t actually expecting an answer. “Still. Just in case.”

Quite obviously, my immediate reaction was to text Max about it. It went like this,

“You’re not planning to write him back are you” “Actually I was thinking about directly paying him a visit at his hospital?” “Are you fucking KIDDING ME” “I’m not! I hear those places get awfully lonely. Even more than regular hospitals!” “David this is the guy that tried to kill you. THIS IS THE GUY THAT TRIED TO KILL US ALL” “He said he was ill!” “He could just be LYING SO YOU’D DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE PLANNING TO DO” “I’m sure he’s not! His letter sounds very sincere” “You’re going to do it either way aren’t you” “That, I am!” “Fuck you David. Fuck you and fuck your gullible self. Don’t text me when you’ll be on the verge of death after he’ll have stabbed you in the neck. Bye”

Quite obviously, I didn’t listen to Max, and drove to Daniel’s hospital to visit him the following him. I had gotten him flowers, a primarily white bouquet that wished him a good recovery in the language of flowers. I recalled him being a very talented violin player, so I had grabbed my ukulele (I did play the ukulele instead of the guitar) as well, hoping he still had an interest in music.

I found him in his room, sitting on top of his bed and reading a book. He was surprised to see me, to say the least. He looked… Pale. Sickly pale. He had probably lost a few pounds. I imagined that was what severe poisoning did to someone.

We spent a lot of time chatting. He spent a lot of time apologizing. I noticed that the mannerism the kids had told me about, that I hadn’t noticed at the time, but had scared them (justly), was mostly gone. He would still crack his neck, sometimes. It looked like a nervous habit.

He noticed I had brought my ukulele, and I explained that if he wanted to, we could play together again, unless that was a bad memory for him and he would rather avoid that, in which case I was sorry, I should have thought this through a little more, that was rude of me and- he interrupted me saying that he would have loved, but he couldn’t. I asked if it was because he didn’t have his violin in the hospital. He said yes, partially, but also because even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to play. Then he held out his hands for the first time, and I hadn’t even noticed he was always holding them together and keeping them close to his body. They were shaking, very hard. He said it was the medication. But he preferred being stable, even if it meant he could possibly never play again. I told him I could play for him, if he wanted. Sure, an ukulele and a violin weren’t made for the same kind of melodies, so it wouldn’t be quite the same. He just smiled.

I started visiting him regularly after that, and Max ended up acknowledging after a while that I probably was right. If I had been one on one with him so often, he probably was sincere about not wanting to murder me anymore.

Holy macaroni, this post is obnoxiously long.