Hopeless

Truth be told.  I should have written this last night, amidst one of the most intense feelings of dread and hopelessness.  If we're being totally honest, though, I was in no shape to be doing anything last night.

I can't describe it, but I've been feeling overwhelmed as of late with feelings of dire hopelessness.  I'm lost.  I am truly lost.  A castaway in a sea of possibility, yet I feel like I'm a million miles away.  I feel like I'm on an edge, afraid to look down.  Like I'm being needled forward, inch by inch, to ultimately fall into a pit of obscurity.

My mom recently told me that when she dies, she doesn't want a funeral.  Despite having so many friends, she believes no one would show up for her funeral.  This saddened me.  In part, because my mom feels this way and selfishly, perhaps, I think if she feels this way with all the friends she has, then no one's going to attend my funeral.  It's not that I don't have friends, but these days they seem more like acquaintances than definitive friends.  I mean, my phone's not ringing off it's hook.

Last night, I watched a documentary on Robin Williams.  For years, I found myself unable to forgive Williams for ending his own life by suicide.  There was no booze of drugs in his system, other than his prescription drugs, so his decision, by all accounts, was lucid, which makes the act even more sad.

Selfishly, I never truly understood his life.  What was going on in that brain of his.  Outside of all the crazy antics, I could see the shell of the man inside.  That the zaniness he displayed on the stage, never truly reflected the man he was inside.  In the documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, the late comedian was often described as quiet whenever he was home, away from the glitz and glamour of show biz.  I think that was when Robin was truly himself, but speaking from my own experience, this isn't always a good thing.  If I'm out and about, I rarely think about myself or what's going on in my own shitty life.  It's when I'm home, alone, with my thoughts, that all hope escapes me and I feel truly lost.  No amount of TV, music or movies, what I used to rely on for escape, now leaves me feeling dejected.

Turns out that in addition to anxiety and depression, the late Oscar winner, was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's Disease, as well as Lewy Body Dementia, which is believed to be a major contributor to his suicide.  Selfishly, given my thought processes as of late, I understand now, why the man felt suicide was his only choice, despite having such a strong base to lean on.  Last night, reliving some of those happy memories of Robin, I found myself forgiving him for exiting stage left.

I should have written this last night, when my mind was swimming in despondency.  With my cat, nestled up tightly against me, I still felt alone.  Feelings of dread and impending doom.  I can't explain why I'm feeling this way and I think my cat is feeling it too.  He knows something is afoot with his daddy, but doesn't know how to bring me out of this funk.

Depression is nothing new for me.  I've suffered Seasonal Depression for years.  It's only recently that I had discovered that cannabis can combat those dark feelings and the Seasonal Depression that threatened my very livelihood for the better part of my life, had gone by the wayside.  For the first time in literally decades, I was smiling and laughing my way through those darkened months sprawling from late-October to mid-April / early-May.  That is, until this year.  As much as I detested working at that RV company, being fired for absolutely no reason, really shook me.  I didn't mind being off of work for the winter, as I have a real phobia about snow and ice, but to be cast away, like vermin for no justifiable reason, simply blew my mind.  Maybe that's what blew the gasket to my sanity.

I'm in constant pain.  My ankles hurt SO much, that it often brings me to tears.  My hands are the same way.  A handful of times (pardon the pun), I've awoken abruptly as my hands, usually the right hand, my dominant hand, is cramping up into a ball.  The pain in unequal to anything I've ever experienced, and considering I've broken my back and squashed my brain, both immensely painful experiences, the pain I feel in my hands and ankles, rival those pain levels, if not more.  As a result, I've been relying on the cannabis for pain relief, as well.  I've gone to my physician on the matter.  She ran a series of blood tests and has informed me that I do not have arthritis.  When asked why everything hurts, she has no solution.  Only that I should stretch before bed.  Sorry doctor, but what the fuck?!?

These days, my ankles hurt 24/7.  Not a moment goes by where my feet don't hurt.  My hands hurt, but usually only when I grab something.  If I grab a jug of milk from the fridge, my right hand immediately cramps up.  My knees hurt.  My hips both hurt now, although the left is still worse, by far.  My back hurts, as does my neck and my fucking migraines have returned, although still not at the frequency they once did.  The only thing relatively good is my blood sugars.  Small victories?

I am without work.  For the past half decade, I haven't been working throughout the winter months.  At first it was because of my TBI, a traumatic brain injury that I'd gotten when I slipped on a patch of ice at work, knocking myself out for close to a half hour, which was the beginning of a life altered.  I've managed fairly well, I believe, to come out the other side of that accident, with only damage to my short-term and long-term memory.  The long-term comes back in spurts.  I'll see or hear or smell something that triggers a memory and no matter how miniscule it may be, I celebrate it.  My short-term memory is an ongoing problem.  It may have been a contributor to loss of employment from the RV job, as the morning of my dismissal, I found myself wandering around the parking lot, struggling to remember how to do the next task of my job.  I recall almost collapsing in tears.  Everyone is quick to dismiss these struggles as "getting old", but those people fail to see the scenario from my side of the proverbial fence.  I've always prided myself on my memory.  I was always able to remember even the most finite bits of information, but these days I can stop abruptly in the middle of a task being performed and not have a single clue as to what I am doing, nor why I'm doing it.  This is not a factor of getting old.  This is a real fucking problem.

I am without work.  I want to have something to do.  To have a purpose.  I want to have a job with the city.  To work in the park system, ideally, but I have my name in with some other departments, too.  The downside to this is, I know the city will likely demand a drug test prior to any employment, so it will be discovered that I have THC in my bloodstream.  I don't smoke in the morning or during the day, despite how painful my ankles get.  I smoke only in the evenings.  To help with pain management, depression, anxiety and to help me sleep.  However, in my research of the plant, I discovered that daily use, means the THC that is in the cannabis, stays in a person's system for a very long time.  I know not what the city's policy is on cannabis, since it's legalization.  The philosophy of many companies and people, even, casts a dark shadow on the misunderstood substance.  It's absurd.  A person could be a fall down drunk and it's acceptable, but if a person lights up a doobie, suddenly they're a liability and a menace.  Part of me thinks I should speak with my physician about it, but I've attempted to broach the subject with her many years ago.

A friend of mine, years ago, alerted me to acquiring a Medicinal Marijuana prescription.  They were using it to combat anxiety and other ailments.  I knew from my own experimentation, that cannabis helped me with my own battles with anxiety and depression.  It even helped my asthma, remarkably enough.  So I broached the idea with my doctor.  I had always seen my doctor as a forward thinking, try-anything kind of physician.  Hell, she's one of the top doctors in the city.  I'm often commended by other physicians for being so lucky as to have her as my personal physician.  So when I brought up the idea of getting a prescription for cannabis, the idea was shot down immediately and with extreme prejudice.  My doctor was not going to have any of that, citing that marijuana is a "gateway drug".  That is horse shit.  It's my own personal belief that if someone is going to try a hard drug like cocaine or worse, then they were going to do it anyway.  They didn't need an introduction to it by Mary Jane.

I wish I had a rock.  Someone to bounce ideas off of.  Not someone to solve my problems, but who'll be there for me.  To listen to me.  To hear me.  To...  I don't know.

My friend's kid found love on the interwebs.  He is or was a closed off individual.  I worked with him, side-by-side, and it was difficult to bring him out of his shell to even say hi, but somehow he found love on the interwebs. Perhaps I should do this?  Nah.  I'm too broken.  Physically.  Another contributor to my sorrow, me thinks.

I should have written this, last night.  My head racing with thoughts and disparity.  These days.  I am truly lost.  I don't know where to go.  What I should do.  I just want to curl up in a ball and disappear.

My cat, Monkey, is twelve years old.  I pray that he lives to be thirty, because the idea of living in this house without his fuzzy little face staring up at me, is unbearable.  I broke down into full on tears, last week, thinking about him, my cat, being in his twilight years.  My mom, who I've been spending a lot of time with, is seventy-five and talking about when she dies.  When they're both gone, I'm going to be truly alone.  No one to care the least about me.  It was the first time in a very long time where I thought suicide was a legitimate choice.  That without these two pivotal components of my life, I couldn't possibly move on.  This coupled with the fact that I'm susceptible to getting dementia or Alzheimer's Disease because of my multiple concussions.  I've had at least fifteen, to the best of my knowledge, if not more.  Three of which were fatal enough to knock me out and cause permanent damage.  My future looks bleak.  Bleak and alone.

There's no danger of my taking my life.  Not anytime soon, but when these loved ones make their exit...  I'm not a religious person, by any means, but I hope that whatever powers that be, can deliver me through what will likely be the darkest patch of my life.

I was thinking the other day.  Counting how many Christmas' I had left in my life.  How many more birthday's.  I don't have that many.  More than what can be counted on both hands, but less than the amount including my toes.

My feet hurt SO much, right now and I feel fucking helpless.

I should have written this last night.  I may have had a way to end this thought process.  To wrap it up with a neatly tied bow.  Maybe even talk myself into a solution.  A glimmer of hope.  End on a positive note, but I can't.  It's not in me.  It's nowhere to be found.  And will it matter?  Will anyone even read this?  Probably not.  Nobody gives a shit.  People just interject enough on social media to pat themselves on the back with the belief that they contributed.  That they cared, but...  My phone isn't ringing off the hook.

I'm surrounded by so many people, but I've never felt more alone. 😔

Smoke & Mirrors - Chapter Three: The Escape Plan

Earlier this year, we were all shocked by the news of actor/comedian, Robin Williams have committed suicide by way of hanging.  He killed himself in the very same manner as my favourite pro wrestler, Chris Benoit.  Aside from Benoit's horrific acts that preluded to his suicide, the act of hanging oneself in the manner than these two individuals settled upon, has baffled me in the time since.  Neither one hung from a height, but instead, wrapped the belt around their necks then leaned into the hanging.  I apologize for the graphic detail, but suicide isn't a natural behavior.  At some point, the body's natural instinct for survival is going to set in and (should) override the predetermination of the suicide, but this never seemed to be the case.  I can't remember if Chris had any drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of his demise, and I never heard anything about Robin.

I'm no stranger to the contemplation of suicide.  I'd be remiss if I said that the thought had never crossed my mind.  It has, but it's only been twice..., I think.  Maybe three times.  Hopefully, through investigation in this chapter of my shitty little life, I'll be able to recall the exact number.  Although, I'm certain it's only been twice.

The first time, was a fleeting thought.  More of a "I'll show them", sort of mentality.  It was following the incident with my dad.  I had moved into the city, living with my aunt.  She worked out of town, so I had the apartment all to myself.  A lot of free time on my hands and most of it spent alone with my thoughts.  I do recall that at the time, I was reeling from the idea of a father beating his own son black, blue and bloody.  I couldn't wrap my head around it.  I'd never come to the "Jeckyll & Hyde" revelation until many years later.  Sadly, it was after his death.  I'd already made my peace with him and, in my opinion, we'd become friends.  However, at the tender age of seventeen, my brain was not fully developed yet, so my intelligence was still lacked.

One day, in a fit of depression, anxiety, anger and whatever else was in my head, spicing that stew of negativity, I came up with a plan of revenge.  I planned to kill myself, just so I could see the guilt on my father's face when he came to realize that he was the reason I had killed myself.  The plan, I thought, was foolproof.  That is, until I realized that I couldn't see the look of shame and guilt on his face, if I were dead.  I quickly discarded that plan, choosing life instead.

The second time I'd contemplated suicide was almost six years ago.  I got fired from a job, due to a violent reaction to a comment that a fellow worker had said (ironically) about my father.  I'm ashamed of my actions and I refuse to share those details in this forum, but suffice it to say, it was pretty f*cking bad.

Everyone's opinion of me was going to be, and I'm sure has been, forever altered.  Especially, after some of the embellishments I've heard over the years.  They were not kind and painted me in a much worse image than what had happened in reality.  I was brought up on charges of assault and faced real jail time, it was that bad.  Thankfully, I sought anger management straight away and that coupled with conflicting stories from the victim and the single witness, in addition to my honest and yes very unflattering description of events, helped me avoid jail and anything that would scar my permanent criminal record.  We settled by way of a mediator and a written apology, which I spent a full week of writing and re-writing to make it sound as honest as possible.  I really was sorry.

However, in the initial hours following the assault, I knew that a person of whom I cared for deeply would hear of my downfall and embellished facts of the matter and I thought that if she thought me to be a monster, that I couldn't live on from that.  Thankfully, I contacted her a day or two following my dismissal and everything was copacetic.  Our friendship would remain intact and suicide was never an option after that.

Lately, there seem to be a cornucopia of reports of people, young and old, committing suicide as a way of escaping their problems.  After my initial contemplation and realization, I never even considered suicide after that.  Other people venture into drugs and alcohol as a way of coping with stress and anxiety.  Having been a witness to how alcohol affected my dad, I strayed away from alcohol and drugs never seemed to be an option.  Instead, I dove head first into adventure.  I was a famed archaeologist, fighting the Nazi plight.  I was a scoundrel of a space pirate, battling the evil empire with my large hairy companion and a feisty princess at my side.  I was also a race car driver, a pirate, a nerdy high school kid who scored the hot cheerleader.  It seemed like week-to-week, I was a different charismatic character and sad thoughts and anxiety and loneliness was never a factor again.  Not for a few more years, anyway.  Whenever I'd feel low, sad or depressed, I'd escape to the movies and for two hours, I didn't have to be me, anymore.

Innocence Lost - RIP Robin Williams

News of the death came suddenly and unexpected, yesterday afternoon.  I was sitting on my couch, flipping through my Twitter feed, like I've done thousands of times before, when all of a sudden the feed was blanketed with well wishes and RIPs to the beloved comedian.  My heart stopped and sunk deep into my chest.  Panic overwhelmed me, mixed with confusion and disbelief.  What sort of tragedy could've happened? I wondered, speculating maybe another heart episode, given he'd had heart problems in the past.

I scrambled to my PC and immediately tapped his name into Google.  I was first met with a website that claimed that Robin Williams was the victim of a death hoax, similar to one's experienced by Jeff Goldblum, Jackie Chan, Russell Crowe and even Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who responded "I would love to meet the person who is starting rumors of my death - to show them how a dead foot feels up their ass!"  I rested back in my chair, relieved for a moment that the reports of Williams' death, was a a ruse.  However, the dozens of websites directly beneath that one, told a much different tale.  A much darker and dreadful story, that broke my heart all over again.

Reports that the actor was discovered asphyxiated in his home.  Immediately, speculation jumped to suicide, although at the time, it was only mentioned that the actor had been experiencing major depression as of late.  To jump immediately to the conclusion of suicide, though...  I didn't want to believe it.  I refused to believe it.  It's one thing to feel helpless and alone.  I feel like that almost everyday.  It's another thing, I feel, to feel this way, yet have dozens of avenues all around you.  Robin has wonderful loving children.  He's got a beautiful loving wife. Dozens of caring friends and millions of fans.  Twitter, alone, is a fantastic artery for fans to connect with their heroes to send well-wishes and praise.  Albeit, there are some assholes who use the social media device to shit on people, but this is Robin-freakin'-Williams, an angel of men who walked amongst us.  I'm nobody special, but I get overwhelmed with good will and pride when someone responds positively to one of my tweets.

Found asphyxiated, they claimed.  I thought immediately that perhaps it was an accident.  Perhaps an allergic reaction to something.  Maybe he was on a new prescription and it reacted the wrong way.  Speaking personally, my allergy to peanuts is so bad, that if I'm simply in a room with the nut, I can feel my chest grow tight and breathing becomes laboured in a major way.  If left too long, I'm confident my dead ass would be found slumped in a corner.

Sadly, the news was broke today.  Robin Williams committed suicide by hanging himself with a belt.  I was speechless.  Saddened by the report, but more so by how sad and miserable he must have been in those final moments.  The room grew silent, as if the entire world had been placed on pause.  No birds were chirping, no traffic passed by my house.  It was like the entire world had stopped for a respective moment of silence.  I commented on a friend's Facebook post yesterday that if feels like a huge void has been left in his wake.

Left to my own thoughts, I couldn't help but wonder about his state of mind.  Curious as to what brought him to the point that he felt there was no other alternative, but to exit this world.  In the past, I can recall a couple of occasions where I was so low that I did actually want to die.  Once in high school, but opted out realizing that it was more out of spite than out of releasing any sort of mental anguish.  Then again a few years ago, when I'd lost my job due to horrendous circumstances.  Kind words from a person I cared deeply for, literally saved my life that day.  Nowadays, I have a cat.  My "little boy", Monkey, and as goofy as it sounds, no matter how dark and sad and depressed I get, I will never do anything malicious to myself, because I have him and he depends on me.  I have nephews, too.  About the only family members that I actually like on a personal level, but it's my boy, Monkey that keeps me inside the lines of sanity.

It's not out of some kind of morbid curiosity that I think about the suicide, but more of a need to understand.  The human body, as a whole, possesses a natural need to survive.  It does it without thought.  As natural as it is for your heart to pump blood or your lungs to inhale oxygen, so is the will to survive.  So to wrap a belt around your neck then lean into it in order to choke yourself out...  I can't fathom it.  It ranks up there with my fear of drowning.  I can't wrap my head around the mechanics required to succumb to that.

Depression is a helluva thing.  I don't know why I suffer from it.  I don't take medication for it, nor have I sought out any sort of counselling to solve it.  It's something that I live with every day...  It's another fact of life.  Like asthma, my sore broken back, or my rugged good looks.  They're all a curse, but it's what makes me... well... ME!

My heart is broken, today.  Saddened at what the world has lost.  Just like the years that have followed 9/11, where I can't look around without remembering how things were before we'd lost our innocence, I'm not going to be able to look around at all the absurdity and comedy in the world without thinking about Robin Williams.

"You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

- Robin Williams -

August 11th, 2014 - The world lost something truly special.  The important thing, though, is to learn from this tragedy.  See you on the other side, Oh Captain, My Captain.

F*ck Bullies!!!!

Kids be getting soft these days. That's what I'm thinking. Decades of mothers and fathers coddling their kids, teaching them to be soft, rather than calloused to what life brings them. If they fall down and scrape their knee, they're babied until the bleeding stops, rather than dad calling out, "Suck it up you wimp!" The latter is how I was raised. That and a lot more.

I see in the news repeatedly how this teenager and that teenager, is turning to suicide in order to deal with bullying in school. What could be said that is SO bad, that ending your life is better than just coping with the constant scurrility.

I, myself, was bullied relentlessly in my early school years. I recall being singled out in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades, especially. Growing up, I was always a sort of scrawny little guy, and therefore a prime target for those bigger than myself. I remember one fellow, in the seventh and eighth grades, named Jimmy. He was a couple years older than the rest of us, high school age I think, and this f*cker would constantly pick on me and try to beat on me. I don't understand why that was. One time he cornered me on the playground, ready to pummel me with his fists, accusing me of "thinking I was so cool". That statement, for the time, was the furthest thing from the truth. Today, on the other hand, I KNOW I am so cool. (Just look at my hair! Damn, I look good!)

High school, presented me with entirely new challenges. Here I was, placed into a sea of adolescents much bigger and older than myself. A whole new pool of social acceptance. I can remember this one guy, a couple of grades above me, who terrorized me for my entire freshman year. Any chance he got, he'd corner me and just lay into me with the insults. I can't remember much about the f*cker, other than he had kind of a pansy mustache, one of those faggy teenage ones, and this deep-seated scowl on his face. I don't remember ever seeing him with his friends, where he'd have a smile on his face. He'd always be a step or two behind a couple other guys, until he'd see me, then his eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning, and the bullying commenced shortly after that. Midway through the school year, I found myself running late to classes, because I had to take the long way around the school, just to avoid crossing paths with that f*cking guy.

Not once, though, throughout all the hazing and bullying, did I ever think that I'd rather be dead than deal with all this shit. I don't know exactly what it took for me to "survive" the bullying. Lord knows that it wasn't that I hit a growth spurt over the summer. I didn't get that until I was eighteen years old. Far too late for any of it to matter. But looking back now, I can only think it was a couple of things that helped me to survive the taunting.

Number one, was I knew the truth. They'd say one thing, but I knew the alternative to be the truth. The goof in high school, constantly had me cornered, pushed back between a couple of lockers, towering over me calling me "a little faggot" and other similar slurs, but I always knew that I was not a gay. (He probably was, but I sure as hell was not!)

Number two, and I had to think long and hard on this one, but it makes sense. I grew up in an alcoholic family. That is, my dad was an alcoholic, the rest of us were on the receiving end of it. Today I harbour no ill-will towards my dad, recognizing the experience as Jeckyll & Hyde. When he was sober, my dad was the best. When he was drunk, which at the time was A LOT, he was a f*cking horror show. Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger have nothing on my dad when he was rip-snortin' drunk. And this, I believe is the other reason I survived the bullying I received at school. For I know, no matter what these small-dicked idiots could dish out on me at school, my drunk father could dish out ten times (if not more) worse abuse.

So that is my secret to success, but what about all these teenagers today, who would rather swallow a bottle of pills or eat a f*ckin' bullet, than deal with the atrocities that berate them on a daily basis. Some might argue that today's youth are faced with an entirely different era than when I was a boy. Today, there's something called "cyber-bullying", in which tech-savvy bullies take to the world wide web, and post a plethora of untruths on Facebook, Twitter and whatever other social websites there are. Well I don't buy this a a viable reason for offing one's self. Bullies take to these sites because of the anonymity involved. Why, then, can't the victims return like with like. Fight fire with fire. Do like Sean Connery said in the Untouchables. "If they bring a knife, you bring a gun. If they put one of your guys in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue."

Now as I'm writing that line, I have flashbacks of Columbine and alike. I don't mean victims of bullying should bring small arms to school and open fire. That's a bullshit, p*ssy way out of things. I mean fight your oppressors with words. I personally have attacked many a person with my words, and in some instances have caused quite a turmoil. I'm still receiving mail concerning my pledge that Chewbacca from Star Wars, was gay for Han Solo, and I suspect I will continue to receive mail over that. But that's good. It means I'm always on someone's mind. The victims of bullying can do the same. Post all sorts of shit about your bully. It doesn't matter if it's true. None of the shit they're saying about you is truth (in all likelihood).

Today, there's a large movement to end bullying. A valiant effort, this is true. I don't think we will ever see the end of bullying, to be completely honest, as bullying is everywhere. Corporate America bullies the poor. Big government bullies the other parties. "The Simpsons" has been on TV for over two decades now, and nearly every week, you see poor Bart and Milhouse handing over their lunch money to the school bullies. The WWE, which I have not laid eyes upon since Wrestlemania, constantly pits one super heavyweight wrestler against a lightweight grappler. Tell me how fair it is to see a 400lb behemoth fight against another fellow who's barely 5'8"?

Bullying is everywhere. It's a global epidemic. It will never end, sadly. So we need to find other alternatives to combating it. Teachers need to be more diligent. Whenever I was cornered as a young lad, lots of teachers would pass by, but not a one ever stopped to check and see if I was okay. They'd just smile and nod and keep on their way. I think most teachers and school officials know it to be going on, but are oblivious to recognizing it when they come upon it. I think better training needs to be given to school officials and stronger consequences to those who are caught.

"A show of hands. Who here has been the victim of bullying?" a man said to a group of kids during a television program earlier. A majority of hands were raised, including his own. "Now who here has bullied other people?" No hands were raised, except his own. He, admitting that in addition to being bullied, he too had bullied others. Only then, through that honesty, did one or two hands get raised. Everyone is willing to admit they're picked on, but never want to admit to being the monster themselves. As for me. Yeah. I think it could be said, that I've bullied a couple others. I don't remember who, or what the circumstance, but I have bullied. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is. I can only learn from it and move on.

The same goes for those who find themselves victim to bullying and ridicule. Don't f*cking kill yourself. That shit doesn't solve anything. It makes your family miserable, because they couldn't help you. It makes the bullies feel invincible because they drove you to it. What you need to do, is LIVE. Live your life. If for no other reason, but out of spite. If your oppressors "hate" you that much, think of how miserable you're going to make their shitty little lives, by living yours to the fullest. Then when your a success, you can look down your nose at them as they fill your car up with gas or give you french fries with your burger order. F*ck them.